Belief in his young team was always there from Tony Mowbray, even prior to the Fulham defeat, but he accepts that not even he could have expected such a turnaround.

Rovers were thumped 7-0 by the Cottagers at the start of last month but has since reeled off six wins and a draw from their next seven matches to cement themselves in the Championship’s top six.

Mowbray has been keen to downplay expectation and not get carried away, not least having fallen well short of the top six that he made a clear ambition last season.

However, he has always stressed their ability to compete in any game but admits even he has been surprised by the way they have been able to respond to such a setback.

That has raised confidence levels within the group, with the manager saying that is clear to see on the training.

“Repeatedly I’ve said that we can give everyone a game in this league, but I haven’t been shouting from the rooftops that we would be doing probably as well as we are doing,” he explained.

“I know that we can compete well against any team.

“To lose how we did against Fulham, it was a one-off in my mind, it wasn’t a regular occurrence, never mind the number that we got beaten by, we hadn’t been getting beaten by three or four for a number of years.

“The whole of last season we only lost a couple of games by more than one goal so we put it behind us very quickly and moved forward.

“I don’t want to sit here and say that we knew that on the back of that we were going to win loads of football matches, we are the team we are, we compete really hard in every game.

“We’ve got a centre forward who’s matured and got a lot of confidence and scored a lot of goals and has made the difference in some games, we have a defence that is playing with a confidence and trust in each other and things are gelling pretty well at the moment.

“No-one is getting carried away at this club, we know how tough this league is, how tough every game is when you play teams at the top or bottom.

“There’s been evidence of that, teams at the very top of this league getting beat and dropping points so we just look at the next game, prepare as well as we can.”