A DEFIANT Graeme Souness insisted Rovers' UEFA Cup dream is far from over despite the disappointment of last night's 1-1 draw with CSKA Sofia.

The Bulgarians are now the clear favourites to progress through to the second round after snatching a priceless away goal in the first leg of their first round tie.

But, in a passionate message to disgruntled Rovers fans, Souness is adamant his injury-ravaged squad can get the result required to go through when they make they travel to Sofia for the second leg in two weeks' time -- even if they could be making the trip without their three main strikers.

"This is not a disaster and who's to say we can't go there and win and score two goals?" said Souness.

"They sat back and came to do a job on us but no two games in Europe are the same so it will be a very different game over there -- this is definitely not over.

"This season, we are playing quite well away from home and we feel we can go there and get a result."

Rovers' night got off to the worst possible start when Dwight Yorke felt a twinge in his hamstring and had to be replaced after just 12 minutes.

He now joins a growing injury list which also features fellow strikers Andy Cole and Matt Jansen, leaving just Ciccio Grabbi as Souness's only fit striker.

Things then went from bad to worse when Velizar Dimitrov fired the visitors in front and Rovers appeared to be heading for another embarrassing early exit like the one they suffered at the hands of Trelleborg eight years ago.

However, Grabbi then saved the day with a timely equaliser midway through the first half but Souness could not hide his frustration at the way his side performed overall.

"I expected us to have more efforts at goal and to cause them more problems than we did," said the Rovers boss.

"We haven't got the squad to go for it on all fronts but, with the team we had out there, I still thought we were going to win the game.

"We had all the possession but didn't do too much with it.

"We controlled the game without causing them too many problems. The fact they then went down to 10-men didn't really affect them because their game-plan was to get as many people behind the ball as possible and it worked."

Souness also defended his decision to make six changes from the team which started Sunday's Premiership game against Manchester City by explaining some of them were enforced.

"It was no secret that I wasn't going to play our strongest team but it's important that our supporters know the team we did field was the strongest under the circumstances because we had some problems with injuries," said Souness.

"Henning Berg and Craig Short both would have played but they had back problems.

"Andy Cole is currently struggling with a hamstring and Damien Duff has a thigh strain.

"So the only one who really could have started and didn't was Keith Gillespie.

"Then the worse thing that could have happened, happened, when Dwight went off after 10 minutes with a hamstring.

"Contrary to what some people might say, we are very determined to go as far as we can in this competition because we are professionals and we want to stay in every competition for as long as we can."