Tony Mowbray says results on the pitch have been the best way of building trust with the club’s owners.

The Rao family mark eight years in charge of the club later this month, with Mowbray the seventh different manager during that time.

He is three weeks short of becoming the second longest serving, behind Gary Bowyer, and says he has tried to bring ‘integrity and honesty’ to the job.

Mowbray took over in February 2017 with the club languishing at the wrong end of the Championship, and despite suffering relegation to League One in May 2017, could steer Rovers in to the November international break inside the second tier’s top six.

“I always try and use my strengths. I’d like to think my strengths are my passion and emotion for the job,” Mowbray said.

“I think they feel that in the meetings. Hopefully I bring integrity and honesty to it and I try and treat their money like my money.

“I’m trying to build a football club, not them give me £40m or £50m and go and go and do this, try and evolve it. I think they feel that.

“Do they trust me? At the moment I think they trust me because the evidence is on the grass, as it always is.

“In football you have to try and win games because you can talk a great game but you have to do it on the pitch.

“Every team has to win games and at this moment we’re doing okay. They are very supportive.”

Mowbray said in the summer he was keen to dampen down expectations with the owners after promotion back to the second tier at the first attempt.

Rovers have lost just three of their opening 16 matches this season, and a win over Rotherham today would equal their best start to a Championship season since relegation from the Premier League in 2011/12.

“The dream would be that it continues forward and we keep progressing and look for continual improvement so we get to the point where we expect and hope to get promoted at any given time,” Mowbray added.

“As I’ve said to them, I’m not sitting here saying we’re going to get promoted to the Premier League this year, I’m telling them that we have to get better and improve.

“We have already faced some teams that are better than us but that doesn’t mean that on any given day we can’t beat them, but over 46 games it becomes a lot more difficult against teams who have the consistency to pick up points that they will have through their extra quality.”

Mowbray says he has regular phone contact with the owners in India and has also been out to Pune in each of the last two summers.

The boss says his relationship is no different to that at any of the other clubs he has worked at during his 16 years in management, and feels Venky’s are very supportive.

He said: “I just try and tell them as it is, honestly and openly and don’t make them false promises, and see where that takes us.

“My relationship with every ownership has been the same really, let them feel my emotional state in the job, how much you want to work with the players, how much you want to give them help, so they can perform at their best level.

“They either buy in to it and want to come along and help and support, some owners at other clubs I’ve been at might not have had the means at the time to support, but generally I get on with all my owners, basically because I expose my integrity.

“I hope that they warm to the guy sitting in front of them when he talks about football, the players and what’s required to move forward.”