Ask most Rovers fans who they would like to see involved in a more regular capacity and one of the most popular answers would be Joe Rothwell.

Even Tony Mowbray accepts the 24-year-old ‘should play in our team’. Though it is easy to forget that in some capacity, Rothwell has been on the pitch in 22 consecutive Rovers matches.

The attacking midfielder finished last season in fine form, playing all but nine minutes of Rovers’ final seven matches, scoring twice.

This season he’s appeared in all seven Championship fixtures, clocking up 207 minutes, but only with one start to his name.

Having netted an injury-time winner in the Carabao Cup tie against Oldham, Rothwell went close to adding to his goal tally late on in the weekend win over Millwall.

And despite recognising Rothwell’s talent, that is just one area of his game the boss is keen to see the former Manchester United youngster to improve.

He said: “Joe Rothwell, another lad who all he’s done after training is work on his finishing because I’m telling him that he should play in our team but he has to add goals and create chances.

“If he does that then he probably will be in our team.

“That was a great chance for him to say ‘there’s one gaffer, that’s what we spoke about’.

“I like Joe Rothwell I think he’s a fabulous footballer. I stand there for 20 minutes telling him to do his job out of possession and run back when you see a full back bombing on and he’s doing that.

“He’s working hard and if he adds goals and creativity to the team then he will be hard to leave out.”

Rothwell was introduced midway through the second half against Millwall as Rovers went in search of a second goal which came with 16 minutes to play courtesy of Bradley Dack.

His quality on the ball, and fleet of foot, make him a more than useful option off the bench, and has been largely used on the left wing

The boss added:“He’s a good player. He rarely gives the ball away, he can drive past players. He’s as fast as Armstrong in our team when you look at the statistics in training every day.

“He has some wonderful attributes and the job of myself and the coaching staff is to find the best position to realise Joe Rothwell’s assets.”