Tony Mowbray poured cold water on suggestions that Rovers have made a move for QPR left back Ryan Manning and questions whether they could afford a deal to sign the 24-year-old.

Indeed, Mowbray suggested after the 5-0 win over Wycombe Wanderers that Rovers’ remaining budget would only stretch to one permanent signing, or a couple of loan recruits, to help fill out their squad.

Injuries to Lewis Travis and Corry Evans, as well as Sam Gallagher and Bradley Dack, with Daniel Ayala also not up to speed, that left Rovers with few options outside of the 18-man squad selected for the Wycombe win.

Mowbray said on Thursday that Rovers were expecting a decision on a left back in the coming days, and having bid for Manning in each of the last two transfer windows, it led to talk that the Galway man was the player in question.

The Rovers boss was asked about interest in Manning after the Wycombe win, and denied that a move was close for the player who is currently being frozen out at QPR owing to him being in the final year of his deal at Loftus Road, with talks quiet on a possible extension.

Rovers have so far added Thomas Kaminski and Ayala to their squad this summer, and despite previously hinting his side were three or four players short of being able to launch a sustained top six challenge, Mowbray admits the finances available may not run to that many new additions.

“How much is Ryan Manning going to cost?,” he said.

“If you’re going to buy a player, you have to buy the player, give him a salary.

“I would say there’s money to buy a player who could help us get to where we want to be, or we could loan two or three, and use that money for salary, but then that becomes dead money at the end of the year.

“We are talking about building a club so ultimately our decision will be whether we’re going to loan some players that can help us in a one-off season or buy one player who can be ours, but we’ve got more than one position we feel we need to strengthen, or cover.

“It’s a difficult conundrum. We’ll see what falls in place.

“There’s a lot of players out there doing the job for us, Davenport and Buckley finished the game with Rankin-Costello, Dolan, Armstrong, how young was the team today?

“It is a pretty young group of footballers who are trying their best yet I know, and you know, it’s difficult to sustain consistency with seven or eight Under-23s players in your team, that would be difficult.

“So we would like to strengthen, or cover, certain areas because we know the games are going to come thick and fast.

“I know exactly to the penny how much money we’ve got, it’s either a couple of loans or a signing, I would suggest, and I am not sure we’re going to spend it all on Ryan Manning when we’ve got Amari’i Bell doing okay.

“We’ve got other areas I think we need to strengthen first.”