Tony Mowbray says Rovers are in the hands of Premier League clubs given their loan-only transfer policy and playing a waiting game in the bid to sign players.

Mowbray expects to only be able to add players on temporary deals as Rovers’ wait for a new signing heads into the final week of pre-season. Rovers have until August 31 to do deals, by that point five Championship matches will have gone by.

And while Mowbray is hopeful of deals being done ahead of the Championship opener against Swansea City, he says there are no guarantees given deals for prospective signings are out of their hands.

“We’re talking to a lot of Premier League clubs, with where we are we’re going to have to loan, but they start a week after us so are going through their pre-season fixtures now and using all their players,” Mowbray said, with the club looking to have missed out on free agent Adam Reach to West Brom.

“A lot of the big clubs, their players have been away at the Euros or the Copa America and they’re not back so they’re using their younger players.

“When that changes I’m sure the players we’ve identified and spoken to these clubs about might come available.”

Rovers were starring defeat in the face at Bolton Wanderers in their final pre-season friendly until a quadruple change and a switch to a back four saw them finish the game strongly.

Ben Brereton netted twice to earn them a draw, but Rovers still only managed four goals across their five friendlies after failing to score against Everton and Bradford City and netting once against AFC Fylde and Everton.

Rovers lacked consistency infront of goals, failing to score in 14 of their 46 league matches, but did still manage to finish as the division’s fifth-highest scorers.

Since then, Harvey Elliott has returned to Liverpool after his loan deal expired, and Mowbray admits adding extra creativity to his squad is one of his priorities.

He explained: “We need more individual talent, players who can beat players, because we have a lot of hardworking honest players which is a real positive, but sometimes the game dictates that you need players with individual talent like (Bradley) Dack brings to our football club when he’s available.

“Harvey Elliott brought that to an extent last year with his individuality and range of passing, they’re not easy to find, you can’t just pluck them out of the air.

“If we had lost 2-0 I’d have been extraordinarily disappointed with the fact we couldn’t score against Bradford or Bolton, but we scored twice and had other opportunities.

“We have to be able to change the format of games, too often last season we lost by the odd goal and I’m hoping if we can strengthen up before the window closes that we’ll have better options to be able to play different ways with different players.”