Rovers have outlined plans to accommodate their first-team and Academy players and associated staff in one training facility, something Tony Mowbray feels would have its benefits.

Those plans would see the site of the current Senior Training Centre, where Mowbray and his first-team squad are based, sold for housing developing, and then moving into a new facility where the current Academy base is at Brockhall.

Mowbray has had no involvement in those plans, and says any proposals would be years in the making, believing the current Academy building wouldn’t be suitable currently to allow for such a move without re-development.

Rovers say the new facility at the current Academy base would be a ‘state-of-the-art facility’ and become home to both the first-team and their Category One Academy, but that the move wouldn’t take place without plans to sell their Senior Training Centre for housing development going through.

Asked for his opinion on the plans, Mowbray said: “It’s probably above my rank really to give a strong opinion on it. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

“I’ve been at clubs where everyone has been together, Middlesbrough is a case of that, the first-team and Academy are interacting, and I think it’s quite good for a coach, the manager, who can go over and watch the young players’ training sessions and keep an eye on them.

“Ideally you have Academies to try and develop footballers to get into your team so if you can have coaches that are in the same offices and players in the same area then that one philosophy gets very driven.

“There’s huge positives of having everyone on one site I would suggest if you want a football opinion.”

The current Academy site was built first in the mid-1990s to house the Rovers first-team, with the current STC site opened in 2001 to initially house the Academy. The two were switched during Mark Hughes’ time in charge, with plans in 2018 to switch them again shelved.

Asked what involvement, as the current manager, he would want in the make-up of the new, proposed training facility, Mowbray said: “I would have to say that I don’t think these things happen overnight and I’ve been here four years, what’s the minimum time to do something like that, one year, two years, three years down the line?

“Whichever manager is in charge at the time I would suggest they might want an opinion of how they want dressing rooms structured, where the coach’s office is, who goes where, where’s the dividing line between a Category One staffing structure and your first-team structure?

“There’s plenty to talk about if it’s all going to be on one site because the building at the Academy currently is not suitable for both the first-team, Under-23s and the Academy of all ages.

“It’s not an adequate building for that.

“I would suggest years if anything is going to happen rather than anything close by.”