Tony Mowbray said he had no regrets about his team selection despite falling to a heavy defeat at Preston North End.

Instead, the boss was left to rue defensive mistakes as Rovers fell to a fourth defeat of the season. 

They conceded twice in the opening 10 minutes, and twice more in 11 second half minutes in a 4-1 defeat.

Danny Graham had come off the bench at half time to give Rovers hope, reducing the arrears to 2-1, but it was a day to forget for Mowbray and his side.

The boss went with Kasey Palmer as the most attacking player, but it was in defence where Mowbray was most concerned after the Deepdale showing.

He said: “It started off a difficult afternoon.

“Our defending was uncharacteristic I thought, we didn’t deal with their front players at all.

“There were some individual errors, collectively we played too deep and invite pressure.

“If I’m looking for excuses, Mulgrew has hardly trained in the last fortnight, Lenihan has been away on international duty, and it looked like it today that they hadn’t been a part of what we’d been doing.

“It looked like that.

“We need to get back to the level we know we can play.”

Rovers tried to rally after falling 2-0 behind, forcing three good saves from Declan Rudd in the first half, while Palmer and Darragh Lenihan had good opportunities from set plays.

The boss was also frustrated by the incorrect decision to chalk off Ben Brereton’s goal moments after Louis Moult had made it 3-1.

“I thought we dominated the last half an hour of the first half, had control of the game, created some great opportunities from set plays, free headers two of them,” he added.

“Palmer should have scored from a set piece we have worked on, Lenihan glanced one wide and then even at 3-1 we had a perfectly good goal disallowed for offside.

“The evidence shows us otherwise, even if he thinks Dack touched it which he didn’t, he’s three yards onside when Graham nods it down. So that was frustrating.

“Let’s not look too deeply at it other than we lost 4-1 and didn’t defend as we need to.”

Graham wasn’t included in the starting line-up, but it was Palmer, rather than Adam Armstrong who led the line.

When asked if Rovers are still searching for someone to play in Graham’s role when he’s not starting, Mowbray said: “Danny hasn’t trained, he hasn’t kicked a ball for two weeks, his first day back training was on Thursday.

“In my opinion, he’s 33 and hadn’t done any training and the right thing to do in my opinion was to leave him on the bench and not expose him to try and get 90 minutes

“He came on and made an impact, but I don’t sit here regretting the decisions I made with the team selection.

“Palmer played up top, we went with the speed of Armstrong in the wide areas.

“Take the first 10 minutes out of it and I thought it was a confident performance, which sounds strange having lost the game 4-1.

“I’m not hiding behind the fact the defenders weren’t good enough, that’s uncharacteristic of them.

“For two years they have been good for us, they are allowed a day like that which is why I haven’t been too harsh on them.

“But I have told them that the standard has to be a lot higher. You can’t defend like that and win football matches.”