Tony Mowbray doesn’t expect an extensive pre-season before football does finally return and admits there are a number of obstacles still to overcome.

Rovers have already had eight of their final nine Championship games postponed, with matches suspended until at least April 30 because of the ongoing coronavirus threat.

The players haven’t trained since March 13, though plans are place for small groups to take part in fitness sessions in the coming weeks.

The Premier League and EFL have made clear their intention to finish the current season, pushing back the previous June 1 finish date indefinitely, but when games do resume, Mowbray expects a condensed fixture list to complete the games in the shortest time possible.

“I’m not anticipating getting a six week pre-season, I think they will see a window of opportunity and try and force it in pretty quickly and then get the next season started,” he explained.

“I don’t see a big distance between the end of this season and the start of next season and so there’s lots of problems moving forward.

“You can only imagine that we’re going to try and fit the league in in a short period of time before it’s concluded.

“Can they have a six week pre-season before we play games again? I’m not envisaging that because we will be looking for a window to do it.

“So going for a run on their treadmill at home, or whatever, that won’t be enough to get ready to be able to play football.

“Let’s say we finish this season in a four week spell playing three games a week to get them in, how long are we getting before we start the next one?

“Are they getting a week off, two weeks off, are they expected to do another 10 month season on the back of playing nine games?”