The Rovers squad combed over the goals conceded in the Reading defeat, with Tony Mowbray not feeling any of them were down to tactical or organisational issues within his team.

Rovers have kept four clean sheets this season, but the four goals conceded against Reading mean they have shipped at least three goals on three occasions already.

There has been more of an attacking focus for Rovers this season, and a new formation, but they did still manage to keep clean sheets against Wycombe, Derby, Cardiff and Coventry.

However, the influence of goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski was missed in midweek, with Aynsley Pears having a difficult debut between the sticks, with the 22-year-old hoping for better at Swansea tomorrow.

Summer signing Daniel Ayala was also absent, while Mowbray opted for the extra attacking three of Joe Rankin-Costello rather than a more natural option of Ryan Nyambe at right back

When breaking down the goals Mowbray accepted there were mistakes in there, as well as praising Reading for scoring with four of their five attempts at goal.

The opening goal, scored by Yakou Meite, was scored inside the opening 10 seconds, was the most avoidable of the four, but Rovers proved to be their own worst enemy on the night.

“How do I feel about the goals when I analyse them? It’s a fine balance,” Mowbray said, reflecting on the midweek defeat.

“The fact the first goal, straight from the kick-off, they punt it down the middle and 99 times out of 100 the centre half just heads it back towards the halfway line.

“What happened is Derrick rolled the centre forward knowing that it was going to go over his head and bounce straight through to the goalie.

“Barry was running back to his own goal and took his eye off it, it hit his heel and dropped to Joao who touch it and Meite stuck it in to the net.

“Who are we blaming? I can blame Barry for taking his eye off the ball, yet I’m pretty sure he thought Derrick was going to head it, but he just rolled the lad thinking it was going to bounce through and it didn’t.

“I don’t think there was anything tactical, we didn’t do anything wrong other than taking our eye off the ball, and it’s in the back of our net after 10 seconds.

“We broke all of the goals down and it’s not necessarily being too expansive or too open. If you look at some of the goals we have a lot of men behind the ball and we have to keep working away.”

Mowbray has largely been pleased with the make-up of his defensive line, despite conceding three goals on the road against Bournemouth and Watford, and four in midweek against league leaders Reading.

Nottingham Forest are the only other team to score against Rovers this season, Joe Lolley’s deflected goal in injury time giving them the three points at Ewood earlier this month.

But Mowbray said: “This team has shown that we can get clean sheets, we’ve had four of them in eight games.

“Undoubtedly we can do that. You can look at the balance of the opposition.

“Four goals against top of the table who haven’t lost a match, against two Premier League sides from last year, apart from that we’ve been good with our goals against.

“Apart from a last minute deflected goal, we’ve had clean sheets the rest of the way.”

Rovers enjoyed two thirds of the possession against Reading, and became only the second team to score against them this season.

They managed 16 shots across the 90 minutes, with Rafael Cabral making smart saves to deny Adam Armstrong and Lewis Holtby.

Armstrong twice found a way past the Reading keeper, and Mowbray was pleased with what he saw from his side for the most part.

“When I watched the game back I still thought the performance level of the team was really high,” he explained.

“Having 66 per cent possession doesn’t tell you much, other than you’re dominating territorially, and I genuinely didn’t think they threatened our goal for half an hour in the second half yet the first time they attacked they scored.

“We had 16 shots and they had five, we just have to keep doing and we’ll win football matches.”