Rovers will welcome Sam Gallagher back for the visit of Cardiff City – but he will be the only injured player returning, Tony Mowbray has confirmed.

The Rovers boss says the injury situation isn’t a source of frustration for him however, despite the wait going on for Joe Rankin-Costello and Bradley Johnson.

Midfielder Johnson hasn’t played since injuring his hamstring in the opening pre-season friendly at AFC Fylde in July, but did come through 45 minutes in the Under-23s draw with Tottenham Hotspur last week.

He’s set to get a second run-out for Mike Sheron’s side when they face Leeds United tomorrow.

Rankin-Costello has played two behind closed matches, and was expected to be in contention for a first-team return by now, having been out with a fractured metatarsal since April.

Rovers are continuing to be cautious over the 22-year-old’s return however, not least given his struggles with hamstring injuries last season that restricted him to 16 starts.

Scott Wharton is on the comeback trail and continues to step up his training ahead of a possible return next month, with loan signing Jan Paul van Hecke still not yet ready to join in with training.

Though Mowbray says the length of the injury list, and the respective comebacks of his players, isn’t something he is concerning himself about.

He said: “I try and not get overly wrapped up in negative situations of this player and that player, we have to deal with it.

“My coping mechanism just blanks it out, I don’t really associate with the injured players, I don’t spend a lot of time in the treatment room, if they’re not available then I’ll get on with who is available, so I don’t carry that frustration around with me.

“When they’re not, we get on with who we have available and we get on with it.

“They’re all working really hard.

“As has been mentioned, in the adversity of small numbers you can create a togetherness and the team have done that and deserve great credit.

“When everyone gets fit we’ll have to start leaving players out of an 18 man squad, particularly with some of the young lads who have done well in the early season for us, let’s see how it rolls the next few weeks and months, but at the moment everyone is working hard and others are starting to get fit and hopefully in the not too distant future we’ll have some selection issues.”

Rovers are carrying a much smaller squad this season having allowed 13 senior players to depart in the summer and only bringing five in.

The return to fitness of Daniel Ayala, and Harry Pickering coming into the fold, have given Mowbray more options, with Ian Poveda and Leighton Clarkson the only two of the five new recruits to feature in the starting line-up so far.

Tayo Edun, the sole permanent addition, played 60 minutes in the Lancashire Senior Cup defeat to Accrington Stanley on Tuesday to boost his fitness, while Reda Khadra is also pushing his claims for a starting spot.

Khadra was one of four loan additions, with Rovers missing out on a move for Bordeaux striker Josh Maja on deadline day who would have filled the final allocated spot.

“We had every intention of using our five loans but yet we came across an issue that we couldn’t resolve at the end. That would have been another loan,” Mowbray added.

“I haven’t purposely gone and counted the numbers, I knew we had lost a lot of players in the summer and that we were never going to replace all of them.

“I intended to have a smaller, tighter, squad but you know that when the injuries come you have to rely on the players below and I think there’s some positive signs coming from the Academy system that some players are starting to evolve and that was the plan that if we did run short we had some really talented young boys coming from the Academy that it wouldn’t be an issue if they were to get an early opportunity.

“I go back to my own career, without some senior players leaving Middlesbrough I would never have got a chance to play and you have to grab it when it comes along.

“If some of our young players get an opportunity then they have to grab it.”