'Bostin' Cesar's surprise omission from Saturday's starting XI against
With Neil Clement and Martin Albrechtsen now fully-fit 'Bostin' has suddenly found competition for centre-half places rapidly increase at The Hawthorns.
"The competition back there is pretty intense at the minute," Mowbray admitted.
"I saw a real desire and determination about Bostjan's play in training last week when he had an inkling he may be left out at
Cesar had to settle for a cameo role at Hull appearing as a second-half substitute but may get a chance to claim a starting berth during tonight's FA Cup replay against Charlton (KO 19.45pm).
"In the 15-minute spell when he came on at the end, he looked back to the Bostjan Cesar that first came into the team a few months ago.
"Bostjan would have found the intensity of games hard recently because he hadn't played too much in Marseille.
"I'm also sure during his time at Dinamo Zagreb he wouldn't have played six games in such a short space of time like we did over Christmas.
"As a lot of the foreign players do, I'm sure he found it difficult to understand the pace of the game and the number of matches we play back to back.
"It was probably the right time to leave him out.
"Leon, who has been a bit frustrated, waited for his chance again and came in and did extremely well." Mowbray finished.