Tony Mowbray says the illness and injury situation at Rovers is easing, and his options could look a lot healthier for Saturday’s game with Ipswich Town.

Rovers were without four central defenders for Tuesday’s FA Cup third round replay with Newcastle, as Charlie Mulgrew and Derrick Williams were injured, and Jack Rodwell and Paul Downing missed out through illness.

But all four have now resumed training, as has midfielder Corry Evans who picked up an ankle knock in the win over Millwall last weekend.

Harrison Reed, forced off against Newcastle, hasn’t trained today, but is expected to resume training tomorrow and put himself in contention.

“The lads who didn’t make it the other day have been back on the training pitch today. They have another day tomorrow to get their energy levels up. So things are looking better than Tuesday night,” said Mowbray.

“I would struggle to remember a time when I couldn’t pick a team because I didn’t have four players available who play in the same position.

“Normally you have some versatile players who can move around a bit, Jack Rodwell being one of those players, but he wasn’t available. So we threw two full backs in to a back three and tried to get on with the job.

“Mulgrew and Williams were both out there today, so let’s see how they feel tomorrow morning.

“We will make sure tomorrow they haven’t felt any reaction today and if they train fully on a Friday then they should be available to play on Saturday.

“We will make those decisions on Friday.”

The options available to Mowbray could become clearer by the weekend, having been forced to switch his team late in the afternoon of the Newcastle game.

He fielded Ryan Nyambe and Amari’i Bell as part of a back three, but should have more players to choose from for the visit of the Tractor Boys.

He added: “I’m sitting in my office looking at my board and thinking about the decisions I will have to make if everyone is fit and ‘what will we do in this position?’

“Sometimes you have to make sure you don’t give yourselves problems when you don’t have to.

“Tomorrow after training will be the day we make those decisions.”