Middlesbrough boss Tony Mowbray is in awe of Martin O'Neill's magical touch at Sunderland.

Mowbray will attempt to inflict a rare bout of misery on the Ulsterman in Wednesday night's fourth-round replay at the Riverside Stadium, but admits he is envious of his counterpart's secret ingredient.

He said: "Everybody in football looks at Martin and thinks, 'What is the ingredient?', not just me, anybody.

"Steve Bruce is a good, honest, hard-working Premier League manager, and yet Martin O'Neill has come in and found some magic dust from somewhere to sprinkle over the same group of players and get results you can only dream of in all different types of ways.

"I watched them play Manchester City on the telly, which possession-wise was a mismatch, really.

"Manchester City are a high-quality, very expensively put-together football team and yet Martin and his team found a way to win the game.

"Martin seems to have the ingredient where he can find a way of winning games, which is a great quality for any manager to have, to be able to influence a football match."