Blackburn continued their climb up the Sky Bet Championship table as they earned a fourth win in five with a 2-1 Lancashire derby victory over Preston.
Thanks to goals from Lewis Miller and Andri Gudjohnsen, Valerien Ismael’s men – who lost seven of their first 10 league games – moved up to 16th, six points outside the play-off places. In doing so, they prevented their local rivals from seizing the opportunity to move into the automatic promotion places.
The first 10 minutes promised energy and openness, but much of the first half at Deepdale lacked clear chances aside from a strong double save from Blackburn goalkeeper Aynsley Pears around the half-hour mark, when he first denied Michael Smith and then Andrew Hughes.
The game sparked into life just before the break. After a series of openings, Rovers took a deserved lead when Lewis Miller, fresh from international duty with Australia, powered in a header from Ryan Hedges’ inswinging corner. The joy was short-lived: within 80 seconds Alfie Devine, released by Lewis Dobbin, forced the ball over the line after Sean McLoughlin failed to hook his off-balance shot away, levelling the scores.
Blackburn grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck after the break and re-established their lead just after the hour. Ryoya Morishita clipped a free-kick to the far post, where Andri Gudjohnsen — son of former Chelsea frontman Eidur — ghosted across to head in at the near post.
Blackburn were denied a penalty when substitute Makhtar Gueye appeared to be pushed in the face by Andrew Hughes after controlling the ball with two neat touches. Other than an acrobatic, miscued volley from Devine and a powerful drive from Thierry Small blocked by debutant George Pratt, Preston offered little and fell to their first league defeat since October 21.
A late talking point at Deepdale saw Ben Whiteman booked for a late, full-blooded tackle on Blackburn substitute Moussa Baradji that struck him on the shin. Speaking on Sky Sports Football, Tim Sherwood said: “No question – it’s a red card. He knows he’s coming – and it’s a good job he does see him because he lifts his legs off of the floor so he doesn’t get badly hurt. This is horrendous, this tackle. He jumps and he takes him away. If he gets his foot caught, he breaks his leg and the referee sends him off. Why does he have to have a serious injury for him to get sent off? That is a shocking tackle. Whiteman should see red, 100 per cent.”
Preston manager Paul Heckingbottom bemoaned conceding “two really poor goals” from set-plays. “If you’re going to concede two set-plays in a Championship game, it’s going to be an uphill battle,” he said. “We didn’t score when we were on top early on. Put those two things together and it’s going to be a tough, tough game. In the second half, we huffed and puffed, but I felt, once we conceded another poor goal, we panicked a little bit, lost our shape in our attempts to get back into the game and made the game a little bit too open.”
Blackburn boss Valerien Ismael welcomed the performance: “After an international break, there’s always a lot of energy when you restart the Championship and we were strong, solid and, after we came into the game in the last 20 minutes of the first half, this was exactly what we wanted until the end of the game. In the first minute in the second half, we were really into the game on the front foot again and we knew we had to restart again. I liked the improvement in possession in the opponents’ half; we were less sloppy than the last two weeks, more controlled, more focused, had more purpose in the final third. I think it’s a step ahead for us. I think it was a decent win today. A very strong away performance again. A great evening for us.”