Tony Mowbray is a student of football. So the Albion manager does not need telling about Bill Shankly, Sir Matt Busby or Brian Clough.

But the Baggies boss reckons the man who will be in the opposite dug-out in two days’ time deserves his own place in the pantheon of legendary managers.

As a fledgling coach cutting his teeth on the Ipswich backroom staff, Mowbray could regularly be seen filing through the turnstiles at Highbury, handing over his hard-earned money to watch the team he admired more than any other.

On Saturday Mowbray will attempt to pick apart Arsenal. But even if the Baggies pull off an opening-day surprise at the Emirates Stadium, Mowbray’s regard for his opposite number will remain as high as ever.

“Arsene Wenger has really raised the bar in terms of management and in terms of the studiousness and the science of the game,” says Mowbray, whose own team were dubbed in some quarters ‘the Arsenal of the Championship’ last season.

“Everybody else has had to be more professional and more organised and the search for knowledge has been greater after the arrival of people like Arsene Wenger.

“The days of Mike Bassett, England manager, are a thing of the past – writing your team on the back of a fag packet.

“That is a stereotypical manager of the 60s or 70s, although I don’t know because I wasn’t around.

“Arsene Wenger is the total opposite to that. He is very studious, very thoughtful and a very clever man.

“His football teams should be an inspiration to people who want their teams to entertain.”

Mowbray is squarely in the ranks of football’s entertainers. Yet he is anxious to prove, even in the Premier League, that his principles can go hand in hand with success.

And that is where Saturday’s opposing manager provides Mowbray with his greatest inspiration.

“Ultimately he has won in style,” says Mowbray. “Teams like Arsenal are always open to criticism if they don’t win anything, as happened last season.

“But from my perspective, as a football fan, they are still a joy to watch.

“And in my eyes he is up there in terms of changing the face of English football over the last 20 years by creating teams that are a joy to watch. George Graham won the championship but Wenger has put Arsenal year in, year out at the top end of the Premier League. And the perception I have is that he hasn’t spent anywhere near the money of a Manchester United or a Chelsea might have done.”

Behind the scenes, too, Mowbray believes Wenger has shown the way for the new breed of young managers looking to make their mark at clubs across the country.

Already since Mowbray’s arrival, Albion have cast their scouting net wider than ever in a clear parallel with the Gunners.

And, with finite resources a reality at The Hawthorns, Mowbray reckons world class recruitment is the only way to smash through the glass ceiling.

Again, he believes, there are lessons to be learned from the Frenchman who has twice led Arsenal to the double.

“He seems to have everything ‘boxed off’, like his scouting system and his greater vision of where the club are going,” says Mowbray.

“He has gone down that route of setting up scouting systems in west Africa, like Ivory Coast and Cameroon and places like that and bringing young players into Europe and putting them into his team.

“He is a visionary really. 

“Those players didn’t cost £20m or £30m and yet they play in a team who finish in the top four every year and compete to win the Premier League every year.”

However, for all his obvious admiration of Wenger, Mowbray heads to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday confident an upset is possible.

He is adamant that, for 90 minutes at least, ultimate respect will give way to a burning ambition to upset ‘professor’ Wenger.

And Mowbray is sticking firm to his own Wenger-like vision of Albion’s bright future.

“I don’t get star-struck or awe-struck,” says Mowbray. “It isn’t that type of occasion.

“I keep saying that I want us to be recognised for the achievements we’ve had and we deserve to be in the Premier League.

“I’m not buying into the theory of us just going out and enjoying the day.

“As I said last year when we played Portsmouth in the FA Cup, we have to try to be competitive and try to win the match.

“We will go there and try to be as competitive as we can.

“I can have respect for the manager and for the club but ultimately we’re going there to try to get a result and do what is best for Albion.

“Ultimately, somewhere down the line, we want can get to level where teams see us as a big game to play and a big fish to try to beat.”