Tony Mowbray wants the identity he’s looked to implement at Rovers to succeed his time in charge.

Rovers face Swansea City and Brentford this week, two clubs Mowbray feels have had succession lines in place with their player recruitment and in the dugout that has helped them challenge for promotion, and offer a blueprint to follow.

Mowbray believes Rovers have made progress with their recruitment, and feels the club’s young players and Category One Academy offer real promise moving forward.

“I talk about trying to create an identity, and if the manager leaves okay, but you recruit and replace and the journey continues,” Mowbray said.

“I’m just trying to create an identity and it takes a bit longer than the short period we’ve tried to do that.

“I think this club can get there, we’ve got some excellent players coming through our Academy, and if we can get recruitment right, and the signs are that we’re getting that better than we’ve done for a long period at this club, I think the signs are only positive.”

Identity was the buzzword as Mowbray outlined how he hopes the work he is putting in at the club is taken on, rather than ripped up, by the club’s owners to keep Rovers ‘up with the curve’ of modern-day football.

Mowbray marked four years in charge of the club last month, but credits this current journey of building a possession-based style, that he sees as the best way to challenge for promotion, back to the start of this season.

The manager’s position has come under intense scrutiny after a run of six defeats in seven matches, a sequence which was ended by the weekend win at Millwall.

But Rovers face a fight to finish in the top half of the Championship, someway short of the play-off challenge Mowbray was hoping to mount, one that did look on the cards prior to their disastrous February run that ended any top six hopes.

Asked if the identity he was looking to create was one shared by everyone at the club, from the hierarchy down, Mowbray said: “I don’t speak to the owners on a daily basis or weekly basis, I’m giving my opinions on how I feel the best football clubs are ran.

“They have an identity, they buy players to fit the identity, you create a culture and environment where players come to work every day with a smile on their face to work hard and improve.

“I’m trying to give you what I feel is the best way forward, the owners I’m sure listen to every word that I say, the owners have been very supportive of me. I’ve talked long and hard over four years that I find them very honourable, respectful people, good human beings, and I’m only trying to advise.

“It’s not my money that gets spent every year to try and keep this football club moving forward, but we’re in a league where three clubs every year come down with potentially £100m wage bills, £40m parachute payments. It’s really difficult.

“I’m trying to say that the best way to get out of the division is to create an identity, to recruit to that identity, you might have to do it with young players, but they can hit the ground running and be big assets for your football team.”

Mowbray has promoted the likes of Joe Rankin-Costello, Scott Wharton, John Buckley and Lewis Travis into the first-team picture during his time in charge, while big-money buy Ben Brereton is still only 21, the same age as Harry Pickering, the Crewe Alexandra full back set to join in the summer.

“That’s why I believe we should invest in the Academy, invest in young talent, wherever we find it from, abroad, lower league, your own Academy,” Mowbray continued.

“If I’m the coach moving forward that will be the identity of the players. We don’t sit here with hundreds of millions to spend to get us out of this division, you have to make it a growth thing, to grow the club and try and get better every year."

“This year has been a very unusual year, as other clubs a lot more high profile than us have suffered through some pretty severe injuries, but we have to get our heads down, keep going with a direction that we know where we want to go.”

In a week which sees Rovers play the teams third and fourth in the division, Mowbray added: “Swansea and Brentford are two of the teams that this club should, not follow or copy, but they have a blueprint, look at how they have done it.”

Mowbray feels the succession lines have been strong at tomorow night’s opponents Swansea City, dating back as far as Roberto Martinez in 2007 and then onto Brendan Rodgers and Michael Laudrup during their time in the Premier League.

Steve Cooper, formerly a coach with the age groups of the England set-up, is now the man at the Liberty Stadium helm and looking well-placed to guide the Swans back to the Premier League.

And Mowbray feels the influences of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp have had an impact on all modern-day coaches.

“Coaches now are more thoughtful, the game is more positional, and I think Steve Cooper fits into that after his experiences with England, because Gareth (Southgate) is bringing that to the national team,” he said.

“I think you have to be more thoughtful, more clever if you’re to hit the heights as a football coach, and all I’m trying to do is to make sure we stay ahead of the curve, or with the curve, as football teams develop identity and play positional football.

“That’s all I’m trying to do, make sure we don’t become a club that, whether I’m the manager or not, who just keep changing and bring in the next guy who has a totally different idea.

“I believe the teams that get to where they want to be is because they have an identity and the journey continues through the generations of different managers.”

At two weeks over four years in charge, Mowbray is second only to Gareth Ainsworth (Wycombe) in the longest-serving list of Championship bosses.

While Cooper is one of the next generation of managers coming through at second-tier clubs, Neil Warnock (Middlesbrough), Chris Hughton (Nottingham Forest) and Mick McCarthy (Cardiff City) are showing that experience has a lot to count for as well.

But Mowbray says while the ideas of those more experienced may well be different to that of some younger coaches, and indeed his own, he says there remains an identity to their management.

He added: “What I would say is that the thread is always the same.

“Mick does what Mick has always done. I was managing West Bromwich Albion against Mick’s Wolverhampton Wanderers 14 years ago and Neil, I’ve managed loads of teams against Neil.

“But they still do what they believe in. They have a very definite identity.

“That might be different from an identity that I try and create in a football team but the common thread is there is an identity.”

“You can watch a game and you can see a Tony Mowbray football team because they play with the ball, they try and get it through the lines, take it on the half-turn and pass it forward.

“Mick’s teams are very different, but as he’s showing at the moment, they’re very successful and you don’t survive as long in the game if your identity isn’t something that gets you results.”