Tony Mowbray feels the international break has come at a good time for Rovers who hope for an injury boost by the time they are next in Championship action.

Rovers will be without just two players during the break, with Ben Brereton away with Chile while Liverpool loanee Leighton Clarkson has been called up by England Under-20s.

Ryan Nyambe was withdrawn from the Namibia squad because of concussion, while Darragh Lenihan has missed the last two matches with a groin problem, but Mowbray expects both to be back in contention for the Sky Blues visit.

Fellow defenders Jan Paul van Hecke and Scott Wharton will play a behind closed doors game during the break, while Bradley Johnson was in the squad for the first time at Blackpool.

Mowbray felt defensive disruption played a part in their back-to-back defeats heading into the break, and added: “Fingers crossed both of them will be available after the international break and the results will swing back to how they were before the injuries came.

“The bigger picture is the squad depth, you lose key players and all of a sudden your results turn from being positive and being really hard to break down away from home and unbeaten and then with some defensive injuries we’ve lost two games.

“It’s a frustration because those results away from home were built on defensive stability but we’ll keep going.”

Sam Gallagher has been struggling with a groin injury in recent weeks, but was forced off in the first half with a hamstring issue at Bloomfield Road, with the attacker now set for a scan.

“Sam Gallagher has been a concern for a while now and we’ve been strapping him up and sending out and it’s great credit to him that he’s wanted to put himself in that position that he’s wanted to play for the team and work as hard as he does,” Mowbray added.

“There’s a frustration, but I’m not going to sit here and talk about injuries to some key players in our team but I don’t think it’s necessarily a coincidence that we’ve lost a couple of games when we’ve lost some pretty key defenders and I would have to say it was the out of possession that was lacking in the first half.

“We turned that around and unfortunately fell short in trying to get a second goal.”