injury to Lewis Travis has given Tony Mowbray sleepless nights this week – but the position of Joe Rothwell is one thing he, and the player, are relaxed about.

Mowbray made just two alterations to his side for the Carabao Cup tie at Newcastle as he continued his policy of naming strong sides for the cup competitions, with Rothwell one of those players to be brought in.

Fifteen times a substitute last season, and twice already this, the former Manchester United youngster was given his first start at St James’ Park, starting on the left of the attacking three, before switching into a deeper role in the second half.

Rothwell has played much of his football for Rovers on the left wing, but a switch to flat midfield three, and Travis’ injury, could offer him the opportunity to stake a claim in a deeper role.

His 70 Championship appearances for Rovers having seen him start 34 and make 36 off the bench, but his versatility within the current system does offer Mowbray options.

“I think he will continue to play both and I think he’s happy to continue playing both, he’s pretty relaxed playing both,” he said of Rothwell.

“It depends on the opposition and whether we think we need to pick the ball up deep and travel with it, or we think we can get into the final third without Joe getting us there.

“Either one, we’ll see the balance of it, who’s fit, what we’re going to do, I’m not pigeon-holding him into one position.”

Travis is likely to be sidelined for the remainder of 2020 with the injury he sustained in the second half at Newcastle, playing on for several minutes before eventually coming off in injury time, as Rovers had made all their changes.

The numbers available to Mowbray restricted the likelihood of wholesale changes, but he admits it was something he had considered.

But so early in the season, and predicting that Newcastle’s raft of changes would open the door for his side, Mowbray opted to rest just Adam Armstrong, as Bradley Johnson missed out through injury.

Rovers dominated the 90 minutes at St James’ Park, but exited the competition after Ryan Fraser’s first half strike, and will now have a week between fixtures after the Wycombe game.

That will offer the chance for Daniel Ayala to get up to speed after sealing his move to the club, but Travis’ injury has been the over-riding news from this week.

“Travis is a big loss to the team,” Mowbray said.

“I lose a bit of sleep over things like that, two days before the Newcastle game I’d sort of made up my mind that we were going to make eight or nine changes, giving the likes of Davenport and Buckley a game.

“I changed my mind on it really and the only player we left out was Armstrong because Gallagher isn’t fit and we needed him for Wycombe Wanderers.

“So I thought ‘let’s go strong and give a good account of ourselves’. Looking at them I thought they would throw a team together and thought if we could keep out structure together that I hoped we’d have gone there, dominated the game, and won because it’s not easy to throw a team together without actually doing the work. I think that’s how the game panned out, we were pretty dominant, but couldn’t get the job done and we suffered with an injury that if we stuck with my initial team we wouldn’t have got.

“But we move on, you can’t not play players because you’re worried about them getting injured. Footballers have to play, that’s what they get paid to do and it was only the third game of the season, not as if they’d played 30 matches and everyone was pretty tired.

“We took the decision to go with quite a strong team and ultimately picked up an injury to a key player.”