Tony Mowbray will travel to India to meet owners Venky’s to discuss his long-term future in the summer as the manager today marks five years in the job.

Mowbray is the first man since Bobby Saxton in the 1980s to reach the feat as he closes in on becoming Rovers’ second longest-serving post-War manager.

His current contract expires in the summer, and while the manager is relaxed about his future, chief executive Steve Waggott says talks with the owners are plannedr.

Before then Mowbray will be looking to end Rovers’ 10-year exile from the Premier League, sitting third in the table with 14 games remaining and eyeing a second promotion as Rovers boss.

Talks yet to begin over a new deal, something Waggott says will be addressed in the summer during face-to-face talks with the owners for the first time since 2019.

“We haven’t been able to get to India for two years because of Covid but we’ll be going pretty soon after the end of the season, at an appropriate time, and there will be discussions about a whole raft of things to do with the future direction of the club," Waggott told the Lancashire Telegraph.

“That will involve Tony, there will be discussions about myself and the general direction of the club and how it’s been run over my tenure.

“We’re both relaxed, at a stage of our careers where we can be relaxed as you can be in football, but it is what it is.

“We have to make sure we’re focused and the only thing in our minds is giving ourselves the best chance of getting into the Premier League. Tony is the same.”

All parties are understood to be relaxed about his contractual situation, with Mowbray declaring it business as usual last month when pressed on the club’s longer-term plans.

Instead the focus is on the club’s current league position, sitting third in the Championship with 14 games remaining, and looking to secure at least a top six finish.

Mowbray arrived at Rovers in February 2017 with the club in the Championship relegation zone but find themselves competing at the opposite end of the table as he marks five years in charge.

Rovers are yet to finish above eighth, or amass more than 70 points, during their years in the Championship following relegation from the Premier League in 2012.

They were relegated to League One in 2017, despite a haul of 22 points from 15 games after Mowbray replaced Owen Coyle, but bounced back with immediate promotion from League One.

The club have since had three successive mid-table finishes, but are only three points shy of equalling the 57 chalked up during the whole of last season.

Mowbray has won 104 of his 253 games in charge and will pass Saxton’s 257 matches next month.

He is the Championship’s longest serving manager, sixth in the EFL list and ninth overall.

Rovers is his sixth permanent spell as a manager, his previous longest being the three years spent with boyhood club Middlesbrough between 2010 and 2013.