EWOOD chief Graeme Souness today jumped to the defence of veteran striker Mark Hughes after he was sent off in yesterday's clash with Norwich at Carrow Road.

Hughes was shown the red card by referee Paul Danson in first half injury time after picking up a second booking for retaliation following a clash with City's Darel Russell.

The former Manchester United ace now faces a second suspension after already picking up a one-match ban for collecting his fifth booking of the season against Crewe on Saturday.

But Souness has refused to condemn the 37-year-old and insists Danson got it wrong.

"I felt the first one didn't deserve a booking," said Souness.

"It was clumsy and it didn't look nice but he wasn't going to hurt anyone doing that.

"Just prior to that there was a challenge on our left back which both the linesman and referee chose to ignore anyway.

"As for the second one, I looked away but it was born out of frustration following a pass he had received from one of our players.

"But Mark Hughes is a grown up, we are asking him to do a job in midfield where the tackles are coming thick and fast, and he has never shirked anything in his life and never will.

"He's 37-years-old so I'd be wasting my breath trying to tell him what he should and shouldn't be doing.

"But he's a competitor and, if I had a dozen like him, my job would be very easy."

Despite Hughes's first half dismissal, Rovers fought back to earn another vital point in their quest for promotion after Marcus Bent cancelled out an earlier strike from Adrian Forbes.

And Souness felt that was the least his side deserved after a superb battling performance.

"Most managers would be happy to see their team get something out of the game after seeing a man get sent off and being a goal down," said Souness.

"But I felt we did enough to win the game.

"I felt we had a lot more chances and, in the second half, we played a lot more football as well. So I genuinely feel we've lost two points.

"Give Norwich credit. They are a team who want to fight for their manager and the way they performed in the first half would suggest they want Nigel to get the job.

"They showed a great determination to win the game, they we're very aggressive and very positive and it proved difficult to play against .

"They launched it from back to front, they picked up a lot of balls in midfield, but they never really looked threatening in that time.

"I can't really remember John Filan making too many saves throughout the 90 minutes."