HIGHLY-RATED young Blackburn Rovers goalkeeper David Raya will be out to cause a FA Cup giant-killing today.

The 19-year-old is expected to line up between the posts for non-league Southport’s big third-round tie at Rovers’ Championship rivals Derby County.

And Raya will go into the clash with words of praise ringing in his ears from one of his biggest supporters.

Rovers U21s boss Eric Kinder is thrilled with the way the Spanish stopper gas adapted to the rough and tumble of Conference football during his first spell away from Ewood Park.

And he has no doubt that Raya, who has been earning rave reviews during his loan spell with the Sandgrounders, can make the step up against the promotion-pushing Rams this afternoon.

Kinder: “For me David Raya is top-drawer and I can’t speak highly enough of him.

“He’s done ever so well at Southport, they’re raving about him, and whenever I’ve seen him he’s proved to be a top-class keeper.

“So I’m not surprised he’s done well. He trains with the first-team keepers here and he has done for two years.

“He’s a self-driven person and he’s got what I call an English mentality. David Raya will not fail because his inner strength won’t allow him to.

“When he’s here and when he’s around us, which is a couple of days a week, we have finishing practice and the lads get so frustrated because he will never let them score – and if they do score, he beats himself up.

“I’ve never worked with a goalkeeper as self-driven as him so he deserves all the success he gets and I’m sure he’ll get it in years to come.”

Raya signed his first professional contract with Rovers in February after arriving at the club from Barcelona-based UE Cornella in the summer of 2012.

His loan at Southport runs out after today’s encounter with Steve McClaren’s high flyers.

Derby are scheduled to welcome Rovers to the iPro Stadium for a league game on Saturday, January 24.

But it will have to be rearranged if either side win their respective third-round ties as that date falls on the weekend of the fourth round.

Raya is now just one of three Rovers youngsters, along with Anthony O’Connor and Darragh Lenihan, out on loan.

Defender Jack O’Connell and midfielder John O’Sullivan have returned to Brockhall, after successful stints with Rochdale and Accrington Stanley respectively, and will come into contention for today’s FA Cup third-round showdown at Charlton Athletic.

Plymouth Argyle and Burton Albion have asked Rovers' permission to extend the respective loan spells of O’Connor and Lenihan.

With Lenihan, O’Sullivan and Raya in the side Rovers U21s started the U21s Premier League Division Two season strongly.

But Kinder’s inexperienced charges will make the trip to the County Ground in Leyland on Monday to take on Bolton Wanderers (7pm) on the back of a seven-game winless run in all competitions.

“We had a terrific start, everybody was hungry, everybody was fresh,” said Kinder.

“At the start of the season we had John O’Sullivan, Darragh Lenihan and David Raya, three quality players in my mind, but to be fair to them they had to go out and test themselves.

“And we knew as soon as we took them three players out of the U21s then we were going to struggle because we are young.

“But this last part of the first half of the season has been disappointing because the younger ones haven’t grown up as fast as I would like them to have done.

“Mentally we’ve let little things effect us, which you thought with the start we had at the beginning and having those three players around them, would have helped them.

“The first half of the year has been Jekyll and Hyde.”