Tony Mowbray acknowledged his squad is in need of strengthening before next weekend’s loan deadline - and revealed he is closing in on a new signing.

The boss said last week he was working on three deals, but has been left frustrated with the lack of progress on some.

That could see Rovers turn their attentions elsewhere as the pursuit of Nottingham Forest attacker Ben Brereton rumbles on.

Mowbray could still add up to four players to his squad, with strengthening in attack a priority before the August 31 deadline.

“It’s okay for me because I like our group of players, they are working extremely hard,” the boss said.

“I just feel they need a little bit of help as it would be difficult to go for the next five months with the group we’ve got.

“Ideally before the window shuts we add two or three, three or four, to the group and get on with it.

“We’re tip-toeing closer to one of the transfer targets.

“I am pretty confident that this particular one will happen before the weekend hopefully.

“Other than that, we have another couple on the go that have been pretty hard work as I’ve said a few times.

“We’re potentially changing our targets because of the slowness of movement with these deals so it’s important not to be left frustrated after a lot of hard work and conversations.

“Sometimes you have to move on and you can try, and try and try and feel as if you can do no more and move on to something else.

“That’s why you have recruitment departments to make sure you have more than one target so it doesn’t become an obsessive target that you end up paying above the odds for.

“We will potentially move on this week and try and secure something else.”

The decision to bring forward the closure of the transfer window to August 9 was instigated by the Premier League.

EFL clubs can make loan signings until August 31, but Mowbray wants to include permanent clauses in any potential deals should the opportunity arise.

He added: “I’ve always tried to identify the players we want.

“I live in a world where there are a million agents throwing a million players at us but I try not to take too much notice of those names and players because we try and do our own recruitment.

“We identify players in positions that we want, we ask the question of the club whether there might be an availability and try and do all the work ourselves beforehand.

“It still feels like a pretty open transfer window.

“The clarification for some clubs I think has to be whether loans with a view to permanent are actually binding. So you can sign someone with the intention of buying them in January but how binding is that intention? That’s the decision someone needs to clear up I think.

“I think the EFL will look at it, the Premier League as well, to see what happens.”

Mowbray also gave some insight in to the difficulty of adding players.

He said: “We now find ourselves in a world where Premier League clubs say they are not going to let their young players go out on loan yet the pressures, whether it be from agents if those players don’t play in the first few games, and they’re sitting there thinking ‘am I going to sit here for the next five months playing Under-23s football?’

“The pressure mounts on the club and then eventually they let them go and play.

“We can’t hang our hat on those clubs definitely letting those players out, because we would leave ourselves short.

“We’re trying to spin a couple of plates and see what happens for us and we leave the preferred target against the definitive target.

“There’s no definite things in this window, that’s why it drags on because you might ideally want a player that at the moment are not coming out on loan but in a weeks’ time they probably will.

“It’s just whether you can hold your nerve long enough.”