Tony Mowbray feels Rovers’ early season goal fest earned the respect of Cardiff City and Nottingham Forest having failed to find the back of the net in their last two matches.

Rovers netted nine, without reply, in wins over Wycombe and Derby, but failed to score when taking just one point from their back-to-back home matches either side of the international break.

Mowbray says his side need to find solutions when facing teams who are willing to sit deep and deny space in behind for their pacy front players, but feels playing away from home, as they do at Watford tonight, could play into their hands.

He said: “The better you do, the more respect that teams show you by coming and setting up defensively and making life really difficult.

“You don’t have the divine right to score four and five goals every game, we’ve found that.

“We have to find a way against teams who play with a deep block, defend really deep and deny any space for the sharp players we’ve got at the top end of the pitch, then we find the other way.

“The days when teams come and attack us and make it an open game I think we’ll be fine with the way we play.

“It’s like anything, it’s something that as the season unfolds we have to find the answers if we’re going to win games.

“That’s what you use the working week for. The problem is that it’s very difficult to find the time to coach your team because you’re generally recovering from one game or preparing for another.

“It’s difficult to get the work done, other than the video work.”

Watford have won both of their home games so far, without conceding.

The Hornets’ five matches have only brought four goals, but with just one goal conceded, have the meanest defence in the division, alongside Reading.

And Mowbray says the hosts will too be looking to add to their goal tally.

He said: “I’ve been looking at their results, they’ve not been free-scoring themselves.

“After an amazing start we’ve played Cardiff City, a very experienced side who were in the top six last season, and then Nottingham Forest who are probably the team in the league who’ve spent the most manager, new manager in Chris Hughton, I don’t think they came to win, I think they came to try and stop us scoring.

“And that’s what it was, two tough games. From being pretty free-flowing and scoring goals, five then four, they’ve been two really tough games at home against teams who didn’t really try and do anything but stop us scoring.

“As we move forward we’re pretty confident we’ll score plenty of goals this year.

“If Watford look to be really positive then hopefully that would leave spaces for us and we get back to scoring some goals.”

Watford could include star man Ismaila Sarr for tonight’s game after the winger was the subject of a rejected £29m bid from Crystal Palace on deadline day.

With the window closed, Mowbray believes that will allow boss Vladimir Ivic a clearer understanding of who he’s working with, and feels that will bring the best out of them.

He added: “They’re a team with a lot of Premier League footballers still available.

“They’ve excluded a few of them in the early weeks because they probably expected them to be sold and move on, they didn’t.

“Whether they incorporate them back into the team we’ll wait and see.

“I would expect them to be strong, they’ve got some top players and a new coach who’s obviously been used to winning and they’ve started  pretty well, all tight games.

“We’ll go there and be as positive as we are on the road and find a performance that can get us a result.”