"I’m driving through there to get to the motorway – that’s all I’m doing!" Middlesbrough boss Chris Wilder on derby days, Tony Mowbray and if he would manage Sheffield Wednesday

The Riverside Stadium will be the stage for an intriguing Championship contest with Saltburn-born Mowbray facing his first away game as Wearsiders boss in the visiting dug-out at the club he supported as a boy and subsequently captained and managed.

Mowbray still lives on Teesside and quipped that members of his own family will be wanting Boro to win ahead of this particular game - which he labels as a derby despite Sunderland's traditional and undoubtedly main rivalry always being with Newcastle United.

Meanwhile, boyhood Sheffield United fan Chris Wilder – who played for and managed his hometown club like Mowbray - joked that there was no way he could even contemplate managing the Blades' derby rivals Sheffield Wednesday.

Asked whether he could manage the Owls one day, Wilder laughed: “Manage Sheffield Wednesday? Are you kidding me?

"I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t fancy a little wander out at Hillsborough. I’m driving through there to get to the motorway – that’s all I’m doing!"

On Mowbray's return to football, he said: "Obviously, it’s been quite an interesting week for them. Our local lad has gone in there, and I’m not sure I’d be able to do that! It’ll add a bit of spice to it, but Tony is a great football man and a great guy and they’ve been going well. Listen, it’s all in jest really regarding Tony.

"I’m delighted, like I think everybody is, to see him back in the game because he’s a good football guy. He’ll know us, and our strengths and weaknesses, and obviously they’re going well.

"One thing I will say is that I definitely know the importance of a local derby. Whether that was Oxford versus Swindon, where I put Paolo Di Canio away three times, or my time with Sheffield United when I memorably put the opposition away in Sheffield once in particular.

"We understand it, and the message to the players will be that while the opposition might not think it’s a local derby, for us, it’s close and it’s there.”