BLACKBURN Rovers boss Tony Mowbray has signed a new two-year deal at the club, with the option of a further 12 months.

The Ewood chief travelled to India for talks with owner's Venkys earlier this summer and was given the assurances he wanted to continue working at Rovers.

And he has now committed his future to the club as he targets an immediate return to the Championship following relegation last season.

Mowbray said: “I enjoyed the trip to India and I'm just looking forward to the challenge of it now,” said the 53-year-old.

“I think it's a fantastic football club, with a fantastic infrastructure. The job is to bounce back straight away and I needed some reassurances that we wouldn't be selling all of our players and that we had some budget to try and strengthen the team if we could, having lost 12 players through either loans going back or people out of contract.

“I'm looking forward to the opportunity of trying to build a team that the fans can be proud of and enjoy and hopefully we can win plenty of games. The only target is to try and bounce back at the first opportunity.”

The Rovers boss admits the extended contract now gives him a platform to build for the future in a bid to bring some long-term success to the club.

He added: "“I think every football manager goes into a club, I know I do, as if I'm going to be there a long, long time and at Blackburn Rovers I do think that we need to build it.

“There has to be some restructuring internally, because we’re now in League One, but ultimately the aim is to build the departments up as I like them to work, to focus on the recruitment of players that can push the club to where we want to be, to develop young players from the Academy system that can hopefully help be part of that team as we move forward, to give the team an identity and a philosophy – a way of playing – that people want to come and be a part of.

“It takes a bit of time to build all that, but you have to start the process somewhere and I’m looking forward to try and make Blackburn Rovers a team that people talk about for playing good football, scoring goals, winning games and the supporters want to come and support the team because of what's happening on the grass.”

Mowbray's immediate challenge is to build a team capable of challenging for promotion from League One with Rovers currently having just 15 senior players under contract.

The 53-year-old has recent experience of the third tier with Coventry City and is expecting a competitive challenge when the new season gets under way in August.

“I think it's important to state from the outset that League One is a difficult league,” he added. “League One is a hard, attritional, physical league, but our aim has to be to win promotion in season one.

“I know how difficult that's going to be, because there's some pretty big teams still in League One – the likes of Charlton, Portsmouth, Wigan, Bradford etc – so there's going to be plenty of competition and we need to make sure we’re at our best in every game, but the bigger goal isn't League One.

“The bigger goal is to push on past the Championship if we can. We have to first and foremost re-establish ourselves back in the Championship if we can get the job done next season and then to aim for the Premier League.

“It seems a long way away at the moment, but if we can achieve our first target, which is what we have to concentrate and focus on, and I a bit uncomfortable talking about future goals, because the only goal at the moment is to try and build a successful team in this league and then we'll deal with the one above, but ultimately the longer-term goals are to build a strong team for the Championship that can compete to get out of that division.”