MARK Hughes is promising a better second half to the season in the wake of Blackburn Rovers' dramatic win over Reading.

Rovers had to come from behind with goals from Benni McCarthy and David Bentley to snatch all three points.

Hughes and his side have had to endure wretched luck with injuries and suspensions in the first half of the campaign, which has seen them plummet down the Premiership table.

And despite qualifying for the knockout stages of the UEFA Cup in February, Hughes believes the best is yet come once he gets some of his long-term injury victims back.

Ryan Nelsen, Brett Emerton, Steven Reid and Jason Roberts are all expected back in the New Year, and with the possibility of a couple of new signings, Hughes is hoping for a prosperous 2007.

He said: "I know about the group of individuals I have. I'm proud to work with them.

"On occasions they know they've let themselves down with a lack of concentration.

"But they want to succeed, they want to get better everyday.

"They come into training with that aim so I'm pleased to get three points that are really important to us given our position and we can look ahead to a decent second half of the season.

"We need to get the senior players that we have missing back.

"If we can add to the squad, we'll look to do that.

"Once the players are back, and with the squad I have available, the second half of the season will be certainly better than the first half."

On the win at the Madejski, Hughes was full of admiration for his side, especially the way they came back in the second half.

He added: "We needed a response in the second half. It was important that we were positive "We needed a change of attitude and I wanted the response that I got and I thought we were magnificent in the second half."

Rovers had a couple of decent looking goals chalked off and a stonewall penalty turned down by Graham Poll and his assistants and Hughes breathed a sigh of relief that it didn't effect the result.

"How many did we score in the end, five was it?" joked Hughes.

"Thankfully, we got two that counted and thoroughly deserved the win in the end. We were magnificent.

"I thought I was going to be sat in front of the press giving my normal speech about again about referees and big decisions but thankfully we don't need to do that.

"When the third goal gets chalked off you think that it's not going to be your day but we kept at it and kept forcing them back, kept causing them a problem, played in their half and we were more dynamic in everything that we did.

"We did the hard yards as I call them."