BRAD Friedel reckons he and his Blackburn team-mates have reached a defining moment in the season after Saturday's 1-0 defeat at Everton dented their hopes of qualifying for Europe.

James Beattie's first half goal condemned Rovers to a third straight defeat away from home, and Friedel believes the players must stop the slide quickly before it ruins their chances of finishing in a top six position.

The former United States international keeper said: "We've still got 13 games to play and there's 39 points to play for, so I don't think we should be getting all doom and gloom about things.

"This season has been a heck of a lot better than last season in terms of our league position, our ambition and all sorts of other things, and it's now up to us as a team to decide whether we are happy with staving off the threat of relegation, or do we want to make that push for Europe?

"It's still in our sights if we want to go for that and I would have thought with the type of lads that we have in our changing room, it will be the latter.

"These results have hurt us but, hopefully, they will only make us stronger in the end."

Friedel could only watch in frustration as Beattie's 33rd minute header secured the points for the Toffees, who had earlier been reduced to 10 men following the sending off of rookie goalkeeper Iain Turner.

"Our last three or four away performances have been quite disappointing in terms of the type of goals we've let in," said Friedel.

"We didn't create a lot of chances at Newcastle, we were second best in the defending aspect against West Ham, we weren't at the races at West Brom, and against Everton we weren't as sharp as we could have been.

"So our away form just recently hasn't been to our liking and that TURN TO P47 FROM BACK PAGE will bother the staff, who will try to address that in a big way.

"In saying that, there are still a lot of positive things to take from the season.

"We've got a home game on Wednesday (against Sunderland) when we can put things right.

"If we win that, that will take us up to the 40-point mark and hopefully we can then kick on from there."

Saturday's defeat, combined with other results elsewhere, saw Rovers slip to 10th position in the table.

That means the Sunderland game has now become even bigger than it was before and Friedel is anticipating another stern test of Rovers' mettle, even though the Black Cats have been cut adrift at the foot of the Premiership.

He added: "Everyone expects us to beat them but if you look at Sunderland, they've given everyone a game. Sometimes chances haven't gone their way but even when they played Chelsea at home, they gave them a run for their money so it's not going to be an easy game for us."