Only a week ago Tony Mowbray was celebrating his manager of the month award for January after Rovers’ four consecutive league wins.

The Rovers boss is now preparing for Sunday’s visit of Middlesbrough as they look to avoid a similar number of consecutive defeats.

Mowbray says his side haven’t gone from heroes to zero after three defeats in the space of 11 days in which they have fallen to 14th, and ‘have more than consolidated’ after promotion.

He said: “You have to stay level headed as a manager because you win four games in a row with three clean sheets and win manager of the month, so you don’t become a bad team over the course of 10 days.

“I think we’re a pretty good team. I’m not interested in what people think about how many wins and defeats you have, because the team have to keep performing and believing like we do and if we keep the performance level like we did the other we will win more games.

“I think the team have been pretty good in the last two games. I know we all get judged on results. Bristol City was a tight game that we could have won 1-0, but we lost 1-0, and had to accept that, but it wasn’t a poor performance.

“Reading was as good an away performance as we’ve had this season, but didn’t get the result.

“The team still have confidence but the statistics can potentially damage that. We’ll focus on the next game and not worry about the statistics that get thrown at you.

“We have to look forward to the next 14 games and see where they take us.”

After following a run of three defeats with four wins, and now in the midst of a three match losing streak, Mowbray was asked about consistency, but says his side aren’t alone in that in what is a particularly tight division.

“Every game is tight and fine margins decide games. Pretty fine margins, we win four on the bounce, with pretty fine margins we lose three on the bounce,” he added.

“Everyone in the league struggles with consistency.”

There is no shortage of confidence among the players, according to Mowbray, who revealed statistics from the Reading defeat to demonstrate their work ethic.

“The players are very positive, working extremely hard. We did the highest physical data of the season on Wednesday night. The running stats were the highest we’ve done all year,” he said.

“The players are still capable of working really hard, their physical statistics are really high and shows the effort they are putting in.

“We’re happy to be competing in this division and are looking forward to this game. The team are highly motivated and desperate to do well. We have another opportunity to do that on Sunday.”