TONY Mowbray believes Rovers will be facing ‘the very best Walsall’ in tonight’s meeting.

The Saddlers were without a game at the weekend which has allowed them nine days of preparation time for their visit to Ewood.

But Mowbray says the onus is on his players to produce a performance worthy of winning three points which would move them back into the automatic promotion places.

He said: “The imbalance is that they haven’t played for 10 days and will be ready for this game.

“We will be playing the very best Walsall I think, they didn’t play on Saturday, but for us it’s reset our team and get ready to go again.

“I know that I’m looking forward to it, if we can hit the heights of the second half (against Northampton) in terms of performance and energy levels then I think we can give any team in this league problems.

“I think the performance level was high which has been winning us football matches and on another day we would have scored more than one goal which we didn’t manage to against a very resolute and well set up Northampton team.

“Sometimes you have to take that on the chin if you can’t find that second goal to win then you put the point in the bag and move on to the next match.”

Rovers were left frustrated by Saturday’s 1-1 draw with the Cobblers, with Danny Graham cancelling out John-Joe O’Toole’s 12th minute opener. Those dropped points allowed Shrewsbury to leapfrog Rovers in to second, but Mowbray’s men will be looking to take advantage of featuring in the only midweek fixture to regain their spot in the top two.

The boss added: “At this moment we are 17 games unbeaten, we have to make it 18 (tonight) and then 19 on Saturday and keep going and hopefully winning those rather than drawing.

“It doesn’t look like Shrewsbury are going away. I think they have something in their belly that they are adamant they won’t go away because some people would subconsciously be writing them off because they might not have the biggest squad so I think that’s a driving force for them.

“We have to be up for that challenge, keep pushing really hard, keep trying to win games.

“We can’t affect Shrewsbury’s results now, we took four points out of six from them and we have another opportunity to take three points off Wigan and make that four out of six when it comes along.

“We have to keep going, keep driving every game and when the games come along we have to be ready for the challenge.

“We’ve got 18 fences to jump and we have to keep going until the end line.”

Mowbray anticipates a similar approach from the Saddlers tonight to that of Northampton.

Jon Whitney’s side arrive in East Lancashire in 18th, level on points with the Cobblers, and scrapping for points to keep their heads above water.

Playmaker Erhun Oztumer, with 11 goals this season, is likely to provide their main threat, with Mowbray knowing his side will need to stay concentrated at all times.

He added: “I would imagine generally, but Oztumer has scored a lot of goals for them and is a very talented individual who will probably sit behind the main striker and wait to counter-attack away.”

“He is a very technical player who picks the right, (Amadou) Bakayogo up front has energy and athleticism to run in behind defences so they will carry a very obvious threat on the change of possession.

“We have to be mindful of not giving the ball away cheaply as they have threats than can hurt you.

“I would hope that we can play the majority of the game in their half and ask questions of them defensively.”