Tony Mowbray wants to keep feeding the excitement of his young team after they edged out Preston North End at Ewood Park to move up to fourth in the table.

Ben Brereton sealed the win with his header nine minutes into the second half as Rovers held out for a third successive clean sheet.

The side named by Mowbray had an average age of only 23.1, the second youngest of any team named across the Championship this season, but Mowbray felt they showed all their quality and enthusiasm to see off North End.

The win was a fifth in seven games and cemented Rovers’ place in the top six, with Mowbray feeling his side dealt with the conditions well.

“I’ve said before they are a young team, I was thinking ‘where the hell have they gone?’, they spent about 20 minutes on the pitch at the end,” Mowbray said.

“I can feel their excitement which is a great thing and my job is to feed it but keep their feet on the ground.

“I got a bit annoyed at a few of them at half time and I think rightly so, we weren’t competing enough for the second balls well enough, I thought the back three were fantastic but infront of that we needed to come out on top in more second balls. It was that type of game.

“We all know the talents of Buckley and Rothwell but it wasn’t really their game but they had flashes of what they can do.

“They’re all growing, all learning, it’s good to win ugly if that’s what this was.

“There was no real pattern to it, the conditions dictated the game, but to win 1-0 in a game like this as a coach is what football is about.

“You put that one in the bin now, they’ve got character, commitment, togetherness and those are qualities that every successful team has to have if you’re going to be consistent at the top end of the table.”

It was never likely to be a game for the purists with persistent rain and swirling wind which Mowbray felt would suit the visitors more.

However, for the second successive week Rovers managed the conditions well to seal another 1-0 win.

He added: “It was blood and thunder, a lot of competition for the ball, helping it on. It was a day for the purists, but a day to win the game. It wasn’t a great spectacle, blood and thunder and thankfully we’re sat here having won the game.

“We’ll put the game and move on.”

Mowbray said he had to rip up his pre-match plans given the conditions, with the ball holding up in the surface due to the standing water.

“We live in a world where the referee is the decision maker, we had to manage the conditions,” Mowbray added.

“Last week we managed a gale-force wind going down the middle of the pitch and this week we had to manage a game where the ball is going to stick so be careful how you pass it.

“The difficulty is that you prepare on a Thursday or a Friday and then half an hour before the game you have to scrap everything and tell them that we had to just put it behind their full backs and let Brereton and Khadra run after it, as basic as that.

“Don’t take any chances at the back, win your headers, defend properly, do your job and I thought they did.

“The back were resilient, strong, powerful.”