Tony Mowbray says his belief in his players remains as strong as ever as they look to end their wait for a win at Millwall.

That run stretched to seven games with defeat at Reading in midweek after which Mowbray said many managers wouldn’t survive a run of one point from the last 21 available.

However, Mowbray says he isn’t resigned to any fate, and says his focus remains on preparing his team as best as he can for the next challenge which comes at Millwall this afternoon.

“I know how good this group of players are, I enjoy working with them every day, I set the ambition this year, we’re falling short of the ambition this year, but as I’ve said this is a unique season,” he said.

“It’s football, you don’t expect me to be jumping around and having a party, it’s hurting everybody, but we need to keep working hard.

“If you sat and watched this team the other night you’d have seen how dominant we can be and we believe we can go to Millwall and dominate and get a win.”

Mowbray says his contact with the owners has been through their representative, Suhail Pasha, and has repeatedly said he will continue to work with the team until he’s told otherwise.

“They understand, they watch the games, they see which is the best team and they have to decide whether they think that’s the way forward,” he explained

“I just work away with the group, try and make sure we’re ready for the next game and look forward to it.

“I enjoy football, I enjoy the teams I’ve built for over 20 years now, trying to play a certain way that’s enjoyable for the players and ultimately what I’ve been saying is that you have to find a way to win and at the moment that’s eluding us, even though I never come off and think ‘we didn’t get anything today because we weren’t very good’.

“We are still a very good team and we could very easily win four or five on the bounce over the next few weeks.”

An issue for Rovers is their inability to score first, having fallen behind in 14 of their last 18 games.

They are yet to lose when scoring first, and the 1-1 draw with Coventry City was only the second time in 12 that they have netted the opening goal and not gone onto win.

That has left them chasing games, and with goals drying up in attack, it’s led to one goal defeats in six of the last seven matches.

“No game has been more than one goal, we feel we’ve been in every game and we could have spun those results on their head.

“How do you turn it around so you win by one goal? Concentration really, as I’ve said, I do genuinely believe the impact of the lack of consistency in selection, due to injury, has had a major influence, particularly defensively.

“We do seem to be chasing games a lot, losing the first goal, and we don’t go into games thinking ‘let’s give them a goal in the first half and let’s see if we can get back in it’, it’s football, it’s concentration, it’s decision-making.”

“We haven’t had the consistency of selection, we try every day to put our backline together and do some resilience work to try and make them confident, yet it’s only one training session before the next game and you can’t keep repeating it because the games are coming too thick and fast to do the work that builds up that real resilience.”