A desire to keep proving people wrong is a key motivation for Rovers striker Danny Graham.

Graham had been written off by some when out of the side in the early months of Rovers’ League One promotion season. However, he has since responded by becoming a regular in the team, with 15 league goals in each of the last two seasons.

The striker will be 34 in August but featured in all but three of Rovers’ Championship matches en route to winning the player and players’ player of the year awards. Rovers will look to add to their striking ranks this summer, but Graham is determined to keep hold of his shirt.

He said: “I’m pleased with everything.

“The amount of games I’ve played, the three games in a week scenario, stuff like that drives me on.

“When someone says there’s something I can’t do, it drives me on more.

“I’m going to need that over the next few years in the latter stages of my career.

“Every time I train and play it’s as though it’s my last one and I give it my all.”

Graham has shrugged off any concerns over his fitness having missed just one game through injury in the last two seasons.

He signed a new deal last summer which included the option for a further 12 months, and the number of starts he made saw him achieve that inside the first half of the campaign.

That will see Graham’s time at the club go in to a fourth season, after an initial loan spell in 2015/16, and he will be aiming to continue his run of having reached double figures for goals in each of his last three years.

On his aims at the start of the season, he added: “To make sure I stayed in the team.

“Finding myself out of the team in League One was tough to take.

“I sat down with the manager and he told me what I needed to do to stay in the team.

“Since then I don’t think I’ve looked back. I feel as though my form has been good, I feel fit, I feel strong and I’ve always said if I’m playing well and contributing then I can be a help to the team.”

Rovers will look to add at least one striker to their squad this summer to take some of the reliance on Graham’s shoulders away from the former Sunderland man.

They will head in to next season on the back of a 15th-placed finish in which they reached 60 points.

“I feel it’s been a good season on the whole apart from those 10 or 11 games where we underperformed massively,” Graham said.

“Hopefully we have learned through that difficult spell and we will be up towards the top end of the table.”