Tony Mowbray says decisions in January will land on owners Venky’s but insists he has never been short of support.

Rovers parent company, Venky’s London Limited, announced losses of £21.4m in the year to March 2021 over the weekend as Mowbray’s men moved into the Championship’s top three.

Three of the starting line-up, including captain Darragh Lenihan, that have helped Rovers to five successive wins are out of contract in the summer while interest in 19-goal top scorer Ben Brereton is expected to be high.

Those decisions could fall on owners Venky’s when the transfer window re-opens in two weeks and while Mowbray says he won’t make demands on the Rao family, he knows the importance of keeping the squad together.

Yet the manager stressed the club won’t ‘mortgage’ itself in a bid to maintain their push for a Premier League return and thanked the owners for their support through his tenure, not least in the deals for Ben Brereton, Sam Gallagher and Adam Armstrong that cost just shy of £13m combined.

He said: “If the phone rings then there might be some decisions to make, what are we doing? Are we keeping them and hoping we can get over the line and then they will have an even bigger decision to make if we did get to the Premier League?

“If that’s their ambition are they going to jump in January for the right amount of money?

“Those are owners decisions rather than manager decisions, I can advise on what we need to do but it’s coming at us pretty quickly January and we can see what happens.”

Loses rose by £0.6m in the year to March 2021 when all of Rovers’ matches were played behind closed doors.

The wage to turnover ratio shot up to 200 per cent before Rovers cut their cloth in the summer with a raft of departures.

In the wake of those figures, Mowbray added: “I’m not a politician but as I’ve said over my five years here that the owners have been amazing to me.

“When we’ve needed some support they have given it to me and I hope the supporters see that support.

“I don’t feel there’s a conflict between the owners and the supporters. I’m sure they would say early on in their tenure they made some decisions that they might look back on but I think the financial support of the owners has been immense.

“I have questioned the ambition over the last few weeks over where do we want to go, do we want to push on from this point?

“We are in danger over some of these players that you want being out of contract in a few months and we’d like to keep them together because they’re so young, full of energy and dynamic.

“Let’s see what the next few weeks brings.”