Tony Mowbray is building for the long-term at Rovers and didn’t want to do in one summer what he aims to do over three or four transfer windows.

Mowbray resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes to his squad in the summer, making just seven signings in all, two of which are yet to feature for the first-team.

The boss believes his side can challenge for a top 10 place this season but is eyeing stability after promotion from League One in order to build for the long-term.

Mowbray knows he will be judged on results, as ever, but wants to move towards having an ambition of challenging at the top end of the table.

“I think the expectations this season are trying to be competitive within the Championship,” Mowbray said.

“If you look at the squad we have now and the one we inherited and where do we think it is, is it stronger, is it weaker?

“I think in certain areas it might be stronger, in others it might be weaker, and there is a balance to what you need to do.

“You need to be able to strengthen it all but you need a few transfer windows to be able to do that.

“Some clubs have tried to do it all in one hit, signing 10, 12, 14 players and found it difficult to get any continuity.

“I felt in this last window we needed to keep the continuity that had created such a special bond last year from what they went through and try and keep adding the quality bit by bit.

“Over the course of the next few windows hopefully that’s what we’ll do and build a team that’s aspirations will be to get out of this league, not at the moment.

“We want to try and stabilise in the league, get in the top 10 if we can, try and threaten around the top half if we can but be realistic in that as long as we don’t find ourselves scrambling around the bottom three, then we will have started a process of building towards a huge ambition of getting out of the league”.

Rovers sit in 14th place ahead of the trip to Stoke City with 11 points from eight games.

They have lost only once, but won just twice, with five draws on their record after a stalemate at Derby County on Tuesday.

But Mowbray feels there were plenty of ‘what ifs?’ within those draws.

“We feel as though we’ve done okay yet some points have slipped through our fingers,” he added.

“I hope that over this season we can get stronger and cuter and not lose these late goals because there are two or three games where we could have taken three points and not one.

“The league is so tight that with four or five more points we could have been right in among the top six and people would be talking about us.

“Maybe it’s good to be going under the radar but what we need to make sure we’re doing is keep picking up points because it’s no good having a decent start and then losing four on the bounce.

“We need to keep working as hard as we can do.

“I do hope we can get better as we go on, keep the same spirit, find a way to dominate games, particularly at home, and finish those off.

“Against Millwall, I picture those two chances for Danny (Graham) that could have finished it off, Reading at home, even though we were 2-0 down we could have won it late on, the Ipswich game, the Villa game, lost points is what I’m talking about.

“They are the ‘what ifs?’ but then we did pretty well to get out of Derby with a point, that could easily have been a defeat.”