Tony Mowbray says the Rovers players and fans alike should relish the challenges ahead as they aim to make it 24 home league games unbeaten against Aston Villa today.

Rovers face three of the division’s heavyweights in the next seven days, starting with last season’s beaten play-off finalists.

But rather than view it as an uphill task, Mowbray is keen to embrace the challenge, particularly having worked so hard last season to achieve promotion back to the Championship.

“Every footballer wants to play at the best stadiums and against the best teams and while it’s still some way short of the Premier League, in Aston Villa they are a European Cup winning team and we have a double European Cup winning team in our next home game in Nottingham Forest,” Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph.

“They are huge clubs with huge expectations and support.

“People will talk of Blackburn Rovers the same, a former Premier League winner, a big club. I feel we’re building this club to not go from League One to expect too much other than to consolidate and work hard, win some matches and add some players, building the club bit by bit rather than spend £50m and change the whole team as I didn’t think that was the right thing to do.

“I’m looking forward to the challenges of facing these teams, seeing where we are.

“Once you get to this stage of the season you can’t really talk about bedding a new team in, the window is shut, you’ve got your players in, you’ve had a break and you should know how you play.

“We’re in to the belly of the season and we have to go and test ourselves.

“Let’s see how get on. I’m aware on paper how difficult these games are yet the team keeps surprising me. They have had tough games and keep finding a way and I’m looking forward to seeing whether the season can carry them along.”

It is almost a year to the day since Rovers were last beaten at home by AFC Wimbledon.

On paper, games against Villa, Derby, Stoke, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United represent Rovers’ toughest run of the season to date.

But Mowbray is confident his team can cause any team in the Championship problems having already taken three points off a Brentford side who are expected to be in the top six mix come the end of the season.

“If you look back last year at our fixture list it’s one that should be exciting and we should relish,” Mowbray added.

“We have to look forward to it, embrace it.

“We should love challenging ourselves against the teams we have coming up in the next couple of weeks and their huge aspirations and money they have spent to try and get out of this division.

“We need to look forward to those days and go out there and test ourselves and not going in to them thinking ‘we’re going to win them all’ but knowing that we can give each of them a tough time and we can win.

“I throw Brentford in to not the big spending teams, but one that’s forward thinking and has been a team that’s been built over a few years and will be a force this year.

“We managed to find a way to get a positive result against them and although we could feel their quality, as we will against some of these teams coming up, you have to look forward to try and take points off the teams we’re coming up against.”