TONY Mowbray said summer meetings with owners Venky’s inspired him to want to lead Rovers back to the Championship.

As he marks his first year in charge at the club sitting top of League One, the Ewood boss revealed that he feels as though the club is heading in the right direction on and off the field.

And the May meetings with the Rao family in the aftermath of relegation helped convince Mowbray that Rovers was the right place to be.

“I came out of those meetings feeling as if they understood what I was trying to do, what was the way forward,” Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph.

“I did say to them that League One, just because your name is Blackburn Rovers doesn’t mean that you’re going to do well.

“Some big clubs have really struggled and it’s difficult to turn it round. Sheffield United spent six years trying to get out of League One, Leeds United took three years, it’s difficult.

“Coming back after that meeting I felt positive and as if we could have a chance, that they (the owners) weren’t just taking all of the money out of the business, and there was going to be support and we could build a team.

“I was aware we were losing up to 12 players, but the level of investment was going to be enough in a league where no-one really spends any money.

“We have put the team together in the image of how we like to play and I felt they (the owners) gave me an inspiration to get my teeth in to it and says let’s go and try and sign some players that can work in this league.”

Mowbray received summer assurances that he wouldn’t have to sell any of his key assets. That meant Darragh Lenihan, Charlie Mulgrew and Elliott Bennett remained while the likes of Bradley Dack, Dominic Samuel and Peter Whittingham came in.

Rovers lost their opening two games of the season but now sit top of the League One table.

And Mowbray revealed that some players would have walked away in the summer had leaving being an option, but the Rovers boss insisted that there would be no ‘easy outs’ for anyone.

He said: “I had some pretty tough conversations with some players that didn’t see themselves as League One players.

“They didn’t feel as though they were part of the problem yet sitting in my office I demanded that they all stayed.

“The owners backed me on those decisions, they knew the salaries of those players in this league and having managed Coventry City in this league we have some very highly paid footballers compared to what most League One teams will be paying.

“Yet as I’ve discovered at other clubs the salary level doesn’t make the quality of footballer.

“I’ve had some extremely highly paid footballers that have not been able to do it in the league that they are in.

“But I looked at the players we had and they were ones I liked and ones I thought would get the job done as long as they were on board mentally, worked hard and understood they would give us a year to dig us out of the trouble that we were in.

“We all got our boots on and got back to work, despite the fact that if we had given them an easy out some of them would have left.

“There was no easy out for the players from last year who were part of the team that were relegated.

“And they have applied themselves terrifically well and they have felt how difficult this league is yet there extra quality has helped us.

“It was the right decision to keep the players we wanted to keep in the summer and the owners deserve credit for continuing to pay those salary levels in this league.”