Tony Mowbray says Rovers are looking to bring in a new central defender after sanctioning a loan move for Scott Wharton.

Wharton played an hour of yesterday’s pre-season friendly win at Lincoln City before his season-long loan switch to the Imps was announced after full-time.

The 20-year-old, who signed a new three-year deal at Rovers last week, played 13 times for the Imps last season as they missed out on promotion via the League Two play-offs.

Rovers have had bids knocked back for Charlton defender Patrick Bauer, with the Addicks reportedly holding out for £2million for the 25-year-old despite him moving in to the final year of his current deal.

Strengthening up front remains a priority for the Rovers boss but he is looking to add more competition for place in the defensive positions.

“We’ve been working hard for the last month on another central defender,” the boss told the Lancashire Telegraph.

“It’s not happened, we’re still waiting, but we’re not giving up on things.

“In an ideal world we know what we need to do. We need to strengthen at the top end of the pitch first but we need to make sure we don’t leave ourselves light defensively either.”

Darragh Lenihan, Charlie Mulgrew and Derrick Williams were granted extra time off in pre-season having played for their countries during the close season.

Wharton travelled with the squad to their pre-season camp in Austria and has featured in all four matches so far.

It is Wharton’s third loan spell away from Rovers, having finished the 2016/17 season on loan at Cambridge United.

He made his Rovers debut in the 2-2 draw with Burton Albion in August 2016 and has six appearances in all, two of those coming last season.

But he will now get chance to further his development with the Imps in League Two, despite third tier clubs having shown interest in the left-sided defender.

Mowbray added: “There was a couple of League One clubs interested in Scott but because of our predicament, Mulgrew, Lenihan and Williams didn’t do the first week of training with us, we needed to keep him.

“We needed to keep Scott with us, and as I’m finding with a higher level, while those clubs aren’t ready to let players go, we were not ready to let Scott go.

“Some of those League One clubs who were looking at Scott looked elsewhere and got other players.

“First and foremost I had to look after our group and Scotty had to play for us and be around our pre-season.”