Blackburn Rovers manager Tony Mowbray has admitted he has been surprised at his Blackburn Rovers team's recent performances after they closed the gap last weekend to the top two to just one point.

Rovers were supposed to be heading into their Boxing Day clash with Hull City on a five-match winning run, however not long before the scheduled kick-off at the MKM Stadium it was postponed due to positive COVID cases in the Tigers' squad.

That could potentially spoil Mowbray's sides momentum which has been gathering pace over the weeks as they're currently unbeaten in seven matches following a 7-0 thumping in November by Fulham.

Since then though they have been flying and thanks to the goals of Ben Brereton Diaz and performances from the likes of Darragh Lenihan and Joe Rothwell, the Lancashire side are now genuine automatic promotion contenders.

Whilst Mowbray knows that they can give any team in the division a good game, the Rovers boss has still been slightly taken aback by their marked improvement recently.

“Repeatedly I’ve said that we can give everyone a game in this league, but I haven’t been shouting from the rooftops that we would be doing probably as well as we are doing,” Mowbray said, per the Lancashire Telegraph.

“I know that we can compete well against any team.

“I don’t want to sit here and say that we knew that on the back of that we were going to win loads of football matches, we are the team we are, we compete really hard in every game.

“No-one is getting carried away at this club, we know how tough this league is, how tough every game is when you play teams at the top or bottom."

The Verdict

Mowbray has always stayed quite grounded when discussing his side and he's not allowed it to go to his players heads too much.

Rovers generally have a young side with not that much experience age-wise so it's probably right to downplay the expectations.

But there's no getting away from the fact that they are flying right now and they look the biggest threats to both Fulham and Bournemouth - both teams who are currently faultering.

January is a big month for Rovers though as they have to balance keeping up their unbeaten run with sorting out contract situations of some of their top stars - Mowbray's side could look a lot different in just over one month's time.