BLACKBURN Rovers have appointed Mark Venus as assistant to head coach Tony Mowbray.

The pair have previously worked together at Hibernian, West Brom, Celtic, Middlesbrough and Coventry City.

Rovers announced the news this evening and a club statement said the 50-year-old ‘was eager to link up with his long-term managerial colleague again at Ewood Park’.

When Rovers parted company with Owen Coyle in February, Sandy Stewart, John Henry and Phil Hughes left their roles as assistant manager, first-team coach, and goalkeeping coach respectively.

Mowbray was appointed as head coach less than 24 hours later, with David Lowe stepping up to assistant manager from his previous job as head of Academy coaching and David Dunn promoted from Under-23s assistant to first-team coach.

The 53-year-old previously told the Lancashire Telegraph he may look to make additions to his backroom staff in the summer, but has praised the work of both Lowe and Dunn.

The make-up of his backroom team was one of Mowbray's talking points with former director of football operations Paul Senior prior to accepting the job, and in his first press conference he said: “The people I’ve worked with before are in employment, they are working hard at their clubs to try and help them and I think it would be wrong of me to approach them about taking them out of their football clubs at this moment. If that sort of scenario is going to happen it would probably be in the summer."

At that time, Venus was in caretaker charge of Coventry City, but the pair have now been reunited as Rovers prepare for life in League One.

It remains unclear what this will mean for Lowe and Dunn, though it is understood Mowbray held talks with both after returning from India.