TONY Mowbray said he never doubted Paul Caddis’ quality but wanted to assess his fitness levels with the 29-year-old set to earn himself a permanent deal at Ewood Park.

Caddis scored twice for Rovers as they romped to an 8-0 pre-season friendly win at York City last night.

That was his third outing of pre-season for Rovers having spent three weeks training with the squad.

Caddis, a free agent after leaving Bury in the summer, is a player that head coach Mowbray knows well from their time together at Celtic.

And of the possibility of the right-sided player earning a permanent deal, Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph: “I have always know that Caddy is a good player since I had him as a kid at Celtic. I had no fears, I have seen him play for Birmingham City for a good number of years, I just needed to see his fitness levels were right.

“He had let them slip a little bit, he’s done a lot of work behind the scenes, running and extra work, and part of our club that comes in at 8am every morning to do some fat burning work on top of the football stuff that the rest of the group are doing.

“Caddy has worked extremely hard and we will see what decision we make over the next couple of days.”

Caddis scored Rovers’ fifth and sixth goals of the night, while also creating the fourth, scored by Ben Gladwin who also bagged a brace.

The Scot would be seen as an experienced option to teenager Ryan Nyambe on the Rovers right, with Nyambe having played all 15 games at the end of last season under Mowbray.

Rovers are also on the lookout for a new striker with Reading forward Dominic Samuel their main target.

Mowbray spoke last week of how that deal was being held up by issues out of Rovers’ control, but the club remain hopeful of concluding a deal for the 23-year-old.

And Mowbray revealed that he is on the look-out for up to four players as he looks to finalise his squad ahead of the opening game of the season at Southend United on August 5.

On the performance itself, Mowbray added: “It is just the next step and we have to try and apply ourselves to every game that we play.

“It was a different game to the one in Austria and I thought we applied ourselves well to what we had to do.

“It was nice to score some goals, we know we’re light in the forward areas and yet as I’ve said to the team goals have to come from all over. We can’t just look to the guy with number nine on his back.

“It was pleasing that we moved the ball about well.

“We created chances and scored goals and it was pleasing to see when we got the ball out wide the wide player coming in off the other side and scoring. Everyone has to chip in and that’s what happened.

“To show our quality was pleasing and there were a lot of positives.”