RETURNING defender Derrick Williams believes Blackburn Rovers showed in the second half of the weekend win over Brentford the defensive improvements that will be necessary to climb out of Championship’s bottom three.

An open first half saw Rovers lead 3-2 at the break and they kept a clean sheet after the interval despite coming under late pressure from a number of Brentford balls into the box.

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And, having seen a number of late goals cost his side points in recent matches, Williams, who was back in the side after recovering from a hamstring injury sustained in the defeat to Bristol City last month, was pleased to avoid any more last-gasp heartache.

He said: “We conceded a few late goals and you always have that in the back of your head so we tried to keep organised and talking to each other and I thought we did that well.

“It was a massive win, I thought all the boys did well and we battled until the end.

“I want to defend first and I thought the whole team wanted to defended well in the second half and we are looking forward to Newcastle now.

“If we can get one more win then we are back in the mix.”

Rovers travel to leaders Newcastle United on Saturday looking to secure another three points and Williams believes Owen Coyle’s side can make the trip with a spring in their step with the 23-year-old insisting that if they cut out the individual errors they can start to string together results.

He added: “We go into every game confident and we always play well against the better teams.

“We like making it hard for ourselves at the minute and we need to stop doing that. To be fair to us we showed the character (against Brentford) to get back in front.”

And Irishman Williams was also pleased to come through the game unscathed having spent four weeks on the sidelines with a hamstring strain picked up in the defeat to his his former club.

“After injury the first game back you are always wary and a bit nervous but I got through the full 90 and we got the three points,” he added.