TONY Mowbray believes Rovers need to be ‘miles better’ than they were against Oldham Athletic if they are to compete at the top end of League One.

Rovers slipped to 10th in the table after falling to a fourth defeat of the season courtesy of Queensy Menig’s last minute winner on Saturday.

The Ewood boss was particularly disappointed with his side as an attacking force and will now demand a response when his side host basement boys Plymouth Argyle tomorrow (7.45pm).

“Credit to them (Oldham), but we have to be miles better, I’ve said that to the players and let’s see if we can manage that,” Mowbray said.

“It wasn’t a performance where I thought we were terrible, I just thought we weren’t creative enough in the final third.

“We competed against a team who are very confident at this moment, they have won four on the bounce and have some good technical players.

“I thought our defence played too deep but we have talked about that in the past with the personnel we’ve got, it’s difficult to press the game too much and play a high line and we got caught a bit in between.

“The jigsaw puzzle isn’t in place, if you have a mobile centre half you can squeeze the game a lot higher, keep the lines really tight, but we can’t do that at the minute and it makes the pitch a bit spread for us.

“It’s a bit frustrating but we should be creating more than we did.”

The best Rovers chance fell to Elliott Bennett who could only find the side netting with his first half effort after rounding the goalkeeper.

Peter Whittingham hit the crossbar with a 20-yard strike from the edge of the box after the break, but clear cut openings were few and far between.

Mowbray said: “Apart from Whittingham hitting the bar and Bennett going round the goalkeeper I can’t stand here and said we had too many great chances, and while they didn’t overly threaten, they hit the target six or seven times.

“He (Bennett) maybe should have scored, he apologised to the players but had no need to do that.

“It was a great run through the middle of the park and was well picked out.  He went around the goalie, did the hard part, but couldn’t finish it off.

“I don’t know whether it would have been different.  They had some good footballers on the pitch and we were trying to suffocate their space and score on the break but didn’t control the game as much as we would have liked.

“We probably got what we deserved in the end.”

Rovers were forced in to one change, with Elliott Ward replacing the injured Paul Downing in defence. The MK Dons loanee is suffering with a hamstring injury, while midfielder Corry Evans didn’t travel after sustaining an ankle injury in training.

Both are unlikely to feature tomorrow night and Mowbray insists that Rovers will need to be careful with Downing to avoid him missing several weeks.

“You have to put up with injuries, they are part and parcel of the game,” the boss added.

“Paul has a hamstring injury and Corry is a frustrating one really. He trained on Thursday but didn’t finish that session and didn’t travel because he picked up an injury.

“They probably won’t make Tuesday, but you never know with the injuries they’ve got, another couple of days might give them a better chance.

“Paul Downing’s hamstring, you have to be careful with them and not rush them back too soon otherwise it could be six or eight weeks out.  We need to protect him.”