Tony Mowbray reflected on a job well done for his Rovers side as they beat Everton 3-0 at Ewood Park.

First half goals from Darragh Lenihan and Dominic Samuel, and a Bradley Dack strike after the break, secured an impressive win for Mowbray’s side.

Ten of the starting XI came through 90 minutes, with Corry Evans replaced eight minutes from the end.

Reflecting on the evening: “I thought they worked really hard and took on board what we’ve been working on during the course of pre-season.

“We played against a Premier League side and coped okay.

“They still had some good opportunities and got in to some good areas, particularly second half, but from our point of view they worked really hard and put in to practice the principles we’ve been working on every day.

“The performance was good last week, we played against the Champions League finalists last week, with no disrespect to Everton. They had a £70m centre half and a £50m midfielder on the pitch when they scored their goals so there is a level.

“I’m more interested in what we do. The signs are good, the players are buying in to what we’re asking of them, but we shouldn’t get fooled by a pre-season performance of result.

“It all unravels in 10 days’ time and then we will see where we are when we go to Portman Road.”

Mowbray has stressed fitness has been the main objective throughout pre-season, but asked if he was looking for more against the Toffees, he added: “We work to a set of principles every game, the opposition we can’t dictate what they do or how they play, we have to concentrate on ourselves and try and overcome the opposition.

“We did well, got a positive result, we showed good resilience and there were a lot of good individual performances.

“I believe we’re a bit further on than Everton in our work, their season doesn’t start for a week after ours, so we’ll have done a bit more than them and I think that showed at times with our work ethic.”

Mowbray had always planned to hand 90 minutes to as many of his squad as possible before the opening game at Ipswich Town on August 4.

Rovers have one more friendly to play when they visit Accrington Stanley on Saturday when those who didn’t feature tonight are expected to play.

“They need to have the confidence going in to the season of being able to play 90 minutes,” the boss said.

“I said to them at half-time that if anyone feels a bit sore then they have to come off and not put themselves at risk.

“Corry is professional enough to do that so before it became a problem he came off with 10 to go.”