Tony Mowbray said he set his side up to frustrate and contain QPR and explained the changes were down to the workload that has been asked of his players.

The Rovers manager made four alterations for the trip to west London where Rovers were denied by Ilias Chair’s 83rd minute goal.

Rovers had only 35 per cent possession, and managed only one shot on target across the 90 minutes, but Mowbray said the game-plan was to always try and frustrating free-scoring Rangers.

That saw Mowbray again go with a back three matching up the hosts, and a midfield three of Lewis Travis, Leighton Clarkson and Tayo Edun as the creative forces of Joe Rothwell and John Buckley started on the bench.

“I made changes because I think the midfield in our team work extraordinarily hard and needed a breather, Rothwell and Buckley,” Mowbray explained.

“Yet we have a big game on Saturday and hopefully we’ll have the players available to get the job done.

“We’ve been away to Middlesbrough and Millwall and got a draw, we beat Forest, we can grind results out away from home and I thought we could grind that out tonight.

“There’s no need to come here and be super expansive and make it a game of basketball against such a good team who score a lot of goals.

“I think the game-plan generally worked well but we didn’t get our rewards from it.

“We set up to frustrate, and you can get results like that. We’ve been away from home and frustrated teams before, and then we play totally different at home and look to score goals.

“They all worked extraordinarily hard.

“We know they’re a good football team, possession-based, and I’m not sure they overly created too many opportunities.

“We didn’t create enough. They didn’t feel our threat, we didn’t hurt them enough on the transition.”

Rangers kept up their record of scoring in every game so far as Chair won the game late on, with Rovers now having lost three of their four matches since thrashing Cardiff City 5-1 last month.

They failed to score for a second time this season, with Dan Butterworth handed his first start in attack alongside Ben Brereton.

The substitutions of Lewis Travis (dead leg) and Harry Pickering (calf) were both down to injuries, while Sam Gallagher was called for as Butterworth’s replacement for the final quarter.

“We have been scoring just about every game this season, it’s a frustration that we didn’t,” Mowbray added.

“We made four changes, I think the team are strained at the moment with the muscle injuries we got, the first two subs were forced through injury.

“It’s tough, the league is tough. We came here, our third away game in four, and it’s not easy to go away and win football matches in the Championship.

“We came really to frustrate and hope we could grab the points, but we leave frustrated because it was so late, and I didn’t think they were going to get through.”

Having been unbeaten in their first four away matches, Rovers have now lost three on the bounce on their travels and now have as many defeats as wins from their opening 13 games.

They failed to hold out for what would have been only a third clean sheet of the campaign, and asked about the run of form, Mowbray said: “I think it’s the Championship, we’ve had three tough games away from home, we’ve lost them all by one goal. Fine margins in this league and you have to accept them.

“We aren’t a Bournemouth, we are a team of young boys who are striving to do the best that we can in this league and I sit here tonight pretty proud of how hard they closed down to deny a pretty good football team.

“We will do our very best and I’ve said to them that what we need to do is win on Saturday, keep our points tally running along, get to Christmas and January and see where we are because I think we are more than capable of winning three or four games on the bounce.

“Let’s stay in contact and see where we go.”