Rovers will check on the fitness of three defenders, and midfielder Tom Trybull, as they count the cost of a damaging defeat at Huddersfield Town.

A third successive defeat away from home will see Rovers end 2020 outside the top half of the Championship and with just one win from their last seven matches.

They start 2021 at Birmingham City on Saturday and could be forced to name a makeshift back four after Ryan Nyambe and Daniel Ayala came off injured at The John Smith’s Stadium, while Darragh Lenihan looked as though he may have to be replaced in the second half.

Midfielder Trybull, recalled to the side as one of three changes, managed just 11 minutes before a bang to the knee ended his night, with Lewis Holtby, the man he had replaced, brought on.

Nyambe was suffering with a tight hamstring when replaced just after the hour mark, while Ayala limped off with a muscle injury in the final quarter.

That saw Rovers finish the game with John Buckley at right back, Bradley Johnson partnering Lenihan who did make it through the 90 minutes, despite taking a painful blow to the ankle.

That came after being trodden on by Fraizer Campbell, an incident missed by the officials, as he remonstrated with the Rovers captain following a foul on Lewis O’Brien that saw the defender booked.

Rovers are already without Derrick Williams for three months, and Scott Wharton for the majority of the next calendar year, while Hayden Carter hasn’t made the bench for the last two matches, with Barry Douglas, dropped to the bench against Huddersfield, the only defender among the nine-man bench.

“I’m not a doctor or a physio, they came off because they felt they couldn’t continue,” Mowbray explained.

“Lenihan’s looked a back tackle, he soldiered on because it looked like he was going to be coming off.

“Trybull was a clash of knees, hopefully it’s just a bang, he couldn’t bend it to run.

“Daniel will be a muscle strain, we’re exposing them to play man to man at the back with the way we’re attacking.

“At Middlesbrough, with total respect to Tony Pulis and the way he plays, as we saw with Sheffield Wednesday at the weekend, he plays with a very compact unit infront and there’s no spaces to play through, for Aitor as well who we’ll face at the weekend. I’m asking Daniel to play in a team that’s a lot more expansive and I think his body is finding the extra workload hard until he gets acclimatised.

“I don’t think it’s a serious injury, his body will just be stressed.

“Nyambe has got a tight hamstring, we’ll have to get that scanned and hope it’s not a strain, just tightness.

“We’ll wait and see what we do at the weekend.”