Tony Mowbray says Scott Wharton faces a ‘considerable amount of time’ out with an Achilles injury.

Wharton was taken off on a stretcher 16 minutes into Rovers’ weekend draw at Brentford having been preferred to Daniel Ayala in central defence.

It was a fifth Championship start of the season for the 23-year-old who had impressed in the heart of the Rovers defence, showing the benefits of his loan spells away in League Two.

However, he now faces an extended period on the sidelines, with Mowbray admitting the injury is a real shame for the homegrown defender.

The manager said: “He went down, nobody near him, and he has had a scan and it does not look good.

“It's an Achilles injury, they can notoriously be bad for footballers but we will wait until he sees the specialist to know more, but the scan doesn't look good.

“We will be without Scotty Wharton for a considerable amount of time.

"Our thoughts are with him at this moment, it's difficult because he was just starting to break through, starting to show some real consistency in the role he was playing and looking really assured with his passing from the back, defending and winning headers.

"We're all gutted for him, it's a real shame, but he's young, he'll get through it and we'll look forward to getting him back whenever that is."

Meanwhile, Rovers appealed against the red card shown to captain Darragh Lenihan in the draw to Brentford.

The Rovers captain was shown a straight red card by referee Oliver Langford, despite already been on a yellow card, when he was adjudged to have fouled Ivan Toney in the box.

The 26-year-old was adjudged to have denied an obvious goalscoring opportunity, without making a genuine attempt for the ball, with Rovers having now opted to appeal the one-match suspension handed to Lenihan.

The club expect to learn the outcome of the appeal later today as they hope to have Lenihan available for the trip to Bristol City.