DANNY Graham has scored four times in five pre-season games, but it is his amount of minutes on the pitch, and not goals, which is of more interest to Tony Mowbray.

Graham netted the winner at Grimsby Town on Tuesday continuing his run of having netted in each of Rovers’ pre-season wins.

He completed 76 minutes, his longest outing of pre-season, before being replaced by Joe Rankin-Costello, having netted the winner just after the hour mark.

Graham, who topped Rovers’ scoring charts with 12 in 2016/17, struggled in the second half of the campaign with a niggling groin injury which required minor surgery in March.

And Mowbray has been pleased with the striker’s improved fitness ahead of next weekend’s season opener at Southend United.

 “I thought it was one of his quieter games, but yet he does what he does, comes up with a goal,” Mowbray said after Tuesday’s win at Grimsby.

“I was saying afterwards that I thought he played too high in the first half, between their centre halves, and the way we’re looking to play I think you have to ask him to play a bit deeper, come away from the centre halves, have a touch of the ball and get involved in the spaces.

“But he got his goal, he got the time on the pitch which is good for us because early in the pre-season he was finding it difficult to get over 20 minutes without picking up a knock.

“But now he’s getting 75 minutes and he’s fine and he will do it again on Friday (at Carlisle) and see if we can get 90 minutes out of him.”

Graham played 45 minutes against Barrow, the final half an hour against Sparta Prague and York City, but has played for over an hour in Rovers' last two pre-season outings, wins over Morecambe and Grimsby.

Rovers are still looking to bring in at least one more striker before the transfer window closes next month, with Dominic Samuel, who got his first run-out at Grimsby, the only forward to arrive so far.

Rovers have gone with two systems so far in pre-season, a 4-2-3-1 and a 3-4-3 to which they switched to in the second half at Blundell Park on Tuesday.

Mowbray used a three man defence in the final five games of last season, as despite dropping in to League One, Rovers won three times and kept three clean sheets.

And the head coach has indicated that he will switch between systems in the upcoming campaign.

He added: “We will play both this season so it’s important that we can switch between the two.

“We have the personnel to do that.

“It’s why we have done it in the last few games really, to have that ability to change between a four and a three without too much disruption.

“We have been working quite hard at it in training.”