Pep Clotet revealed he set his side up to try and stifle Rovers as they ended their losing run at Ewood Park.

The Blues went in to the game on the back of three successive defeats and were staring at a fourth when Adam Armstrong opened the scoring from the spot.

But Clotet’s side were awarded a spot-kick of their own after Amari’i Bell was adjudged to have fouled Jacques Maghoma as Kevin Mrabti found the net from 12 yards.

Clotet went with a more experienced side against Rovers in a bid to end their run of form, believing it was important to contain the Rovers attackers.

He explained post-match: “You know how hard it has been for Birmingham to come here the last few years and I saw the game against Wigan here on Monday, we were here last season as well and struggled in some areas.  I thought we would use the depth of the squad for two goals.

“First to know it’s very difficult away to Blackburn who have only lost two games at home and have had very good form and we had to deal with all their aerial threats and we knew we had to keep them out of our box.

“At the same time we needed to do a  lot of things right to stop that little bit of a bad run we were having and for me that’s a goal achieved in that sense.

“We needed to make sure we could screen Gallagher or Graham, Gazza (Gary Gardner) played an important part. And we know here at Blackburn it’s very important to try and dominate the second balls.

“These need to be your basics to put in a performance and I thought we did that part very well.”

The whole backline got a lot of benefit having Davo (David Davis) and Gazza in front of them, that helped us to keep Blackburn out of the box because they have a lot of chances here.”