The date of Sunday, May 15, 2005, will have resonance for the supporters of West Bromwich Albion and Southampton. So, too, might Monday, April 28, 2008. For Albion, a return to Old Trafford and Anfield looms; for Southampton, an away day to Peterborough. In three years, a gap of three places - 17th against 20th by sundown on that fateful Sunday in 2005 - has turned into a chasm.

Albion followed Southampton into the Championship the season after their great escape, but they have regrouped, bought shrewdly and, in Tony Mowbray, have hired a manager of ambition and steel. In contrast, Southampton, once a byword for stable management, have lurched into chaos in the boardroom and on the field. Since the departure of Gordon Strachan in 2004, four different managers have come and gone: Paul Sturrock, Steve Wigley, Harry Redknapp and George Burley. By the time the fifth, Nigel Pearson, arrived from Newcastle, Southampton were in freefall. “Now it’s come down to a two-game season,” says Pearson, once Bryan Robson’s assistant at the Hawthorns. Away to Albion tomorrow, home to Sheffield United on the final day of the season.

Stability is never more critical for a club than during the psychological and financial low that follows relegation from the Premier League. Players are looking after themselves, fans are unsettled, the accountants are counting the cost in multi-millions and the manager is under pressure from the two years of parachute payments, totalling almost £20m, to rebuild and return. Get it wrong and the downward spiral, as Manchester City and Leeds United have found, is dizzying; get it right, as Mowbray and his team have done this season, and the reward is to be regarded as a yo-yo team, but one on the upswing at least.

Mowbray reportedly numbers magic among his hobbies and has performed one of the hardest tricks of all, not just in taking Albion to the brink of pro-motion in his first full season at the club, but by playing a brand of attractive, passing football that gives his team a sporting chance of staying in the top flight. Parallels can be found in Wigan and Reading, who both took the Premier League by surprise in their first seasons.

Mowbray’s model goes a few years further back, to the Ipswich team that came straight out of the playoffs to finish fifth in the Premier League in 2000-01, managed by Burley. Though still registered as a player, Mowbray was the coach. “A lot of teams disrespected us, a team straight out of the Championship playoffs, to their detriment,” he says. “By the time the game’s done, it’s too late and we had got another three points.”

As humility is a quality he sees in himself and seeks in his players, Mowbray is not about to brag about what his team might do next season. He takes heart from their narrow defeat by Portsmouth in the FA Cup semi-final and by the sense that Premier League teams will be less concerned about stopping Albion from playing than the rugged Championship sides who have made this season so tough. From the moment Bruce Rioch arrived at Middlesbrough and explained the meaning of football to his granite-like kid of a centre-half, Mowbray has been fascinated by the workings of the game. Talk football with Mowbray and his face, usually locked in a scowl, lights up.

“I was captain of Middlesbrough at 22 and I thought football was hard,” he says. “We were struggling at the bottom of the second division and then Bruce came and painted some pictures. He gave everybody a role. ‘This is how you play, these are your options, if you bounce it off your wide man, get it back, feed it into the striker, as he gets closed down, there’s space behind him’. He painted pictures for every player. He made football interesting for me.”

Mowbray is in full flow now. “You give a simple 10-yard pass and he gives it back and then you thread the runner-in. That’s the clever pass everyone sees, they don’t see the little bounce pass that creates the space. When people say it’s great watching West Brom, we ain’t doing anything without a bit of humility and understanding the mechanics.”

It is rare for any manager to speak with such animation about the way the game works, but Mowbray belies his dour public image. He is an enthusiast and a purist. While Stoke and Watford were practising their set-pieces, Mowbray had his players passing and moving, retaining the ball and though the Premier League will demand a compromise, Mowbray will not back down on the basic principles adopted first as a player, practised at Ipswich and then in an eye-catching first managerial spell at Hibernian. To glimpse a smile, look at Mowbray’s team.

“I’m aware of the perception, I don’t smile and so on, but the only day people see me is match day and that’s my work day,” he says. “If you’ve got a deadline and you’re a bit stressed, you’re not laughing and joking, are you? It irritates me this perception. I don’t know where it comes from.

“Like this interview, I don’t know what you’ll write. Tony Mowbray might come across as a thoughtful good guy who works hard at his job or as some miserable git, but it will be powerful in the minds of those who read it. One day I’ll get sacked because I won’t get the results or I’ll become manager of Manchester United and win the European Cup. I don’t know where the path is.

“I do know what football’s like, though. It kicks you in the teeth. We could easily get relegated next season and I could be sitting here making excuses. I know that we’ll try and work hard, be modest, carry humility and integrity around and that’s the message.”

It’s a strong message, too, powerfully delivered by a manager who means business. Albion have a spring in their step. Southampton fans will flash back to a distant era, to the year before relegation when they were off to Cardiff for the FA Cup final and sitting pretty in the league. Every decision made right by WBA has been made wrong at Southampton, a club with a similar fan and financial base. The sale of Theo Wal-cott, Gareth Bale and Kenwyne Jones raised £25m but serviced debts rather than the team and at the very moment the club needed some straight thinking, the board, riven by internal feuds, shed a century-old grip on reality. Promised investment never materialised and now the parachute payments have finished, the wage bill is top heavy. Like Albion, Southampton are a yo-yo club. But between which divisions?