Rovers boss Tony Mowbray is ready to lock horns with ‘exceptional’ Marcelo Bielsa once again and anticipates another tight match between the sides.

The sides’ three meetings in the Championship have all been decided by one goal, Leeds winning both Elland Road encounters with Rovers having the better of the Ewood meeting in October 2018.

Leeds are six games away from promotion, and top the Championship ahead of their Ewood visit, and Mowbray is an admirer of their head coach and his style of play.

However, Mowbray feels his side can upset the odds to get their season back on track after successive defeats, even if the game, which would attracted the biggest crowd of the season, will have a different feel.

Mowbray said: “We beat Leeds at home last year, and every game we’ve played against Leeds in my tenure has been really tight. We were 2-1 up going in to injury time at Elland Road and managed to lose.

“They are an amazing team, have an exceptional coach who thinks outside of the box, his teams play exceptional football and would be awesome in the Premier League I’m sure.

“But we have a burning desire to beat them this weekend and have proven that and will look to go and do that again.

“We go in to that game believing that we can win."

On the visitors, he added: “They are unique in this league the way they play, they almost empty midfield, generally Kalvin Phillips is in there and there’s 50 yards of space around him, their team strategically placed around different areas of pitch.

“They hit a lot of diagonal balls, a lot of diagonal runs from straight balls.

“Even before he came to Leeds I studied Bielsa as a world class coach and what amazing things he’s achieved.

“People talk about his lack of trophies and yet every player who’s ever played under him talks about the amazing stuff he does and how he makes them better.

“I think that’s evident. The challenge is there for us but I always feel that we give Leeds a tough game to the point where we managed to beat them at home.

“They’ve always been tight matches and I anticipate another tight match and yet it will be a totally different feel.

“They would have sold 7,500 behind the goal, so let’s wait and see. It will be tough for us without our crowd roaring us on but we will give it our best shot and we know we can give everyone in this league a tough game.

“If we score first against Leeds it will make it really exciting and we’ll be giving everything we’ve got.”