Who would you rather have in the home dugout as Bolton come to town, Gary Megson or Tony Mowbray? Albion blogger Jarrod Hill mulls it over.

The Bolton game sees the return of a previous manager, who many fans still hold in fine regard. Gary Megson achieved a great deal for our club and for that reason I for one will applaud him.

But, if given the choice, which one would you prefer to be in the home dugout?

When Megson took over he inherited a team staring at relegation to what is now League One, and the club and fans limit of ambition was to compete and survive in the Championship.

We avoided relegation and the improvement was almost immediate, within three seasons we were playing top flight football.

The style of football was effective rather than aesthetically beautiful, he used our meagre resources to achieve outstanding results and much of what we currently enjoy – I use that phrase loosely – can be traced back to his building blocks put in place in a comparatively short period of time.

Megson’s passion was what I enjoyed the most, although it ultimately contributed to his falling out with our chairman, but I liked the fact he always looked as passionate about the teams performance as I was sitting in the stands.

The game against Crystal Palace and the three points which confirmed us as a Premier League team still ranks as my favourite ever day being a Baggies fan.

If Hollywood made a film of that season people would call it twee and unrealistic. To pip our local rivals in the fashion we did and for the ageing peoples champion in Bob Taylor to score the goal that sealed it was just fairytale.

It was sad to see him go at the beginning of our second Premier League season and although his successor Bryan Robson took the acclaim for keeping us up on the last day of the season, he achieved it with a squad predominantly built by Gary Megson.

We all know what current boss Tony Mowbray has brought to our club, he has restored our reputation as an entertaining football team and the games in the majority are good to watch. Last season was quite simply a feast of football, swashbuckling style and a trophy at the end of the season, nearly two!

So we will not only witness a clash of style but a clash of football mentality. Both managers have had success with the Albion and if I had to choose between them, I would be tempted to employ Mowbray long term and Megson on a short term basis.

If you could combine the two we would be laughing, Megson’s defensive discipline and Mowbray’s free flowing attacking football would be a great balance.

Anyway onto the game, a win would see our collective hopes raise another notch, but a loss would see them plummet into despair.

Mowbray has to decide on a game plan that will not only nullify Bolton’s strengths, but also ensure our own strengths win through. Defending set pieces will be key, so I expect Martis and Olsson will remain as our centre half pairing.

The rest of the team selection will largely depend on what formation we go with, but with us desperately requiring a win I expect to see us play 4-4-2.

But, whatever happens, we will see the ground host two good Albion managers, when for years we struggled to find just one!

My message goes something like this -”Hi Gary, nice to see you again and thanks for the memories, please can we have three points today?”