BLACKBURN manager Mark Hughes has urged his players to 'keep the faith' after Chelsea condemned them to a fourth straight defeat yesterday.

A solitary strike from England midfielder Joe Cole proved enough to earn Chelsea a narrow 1-0 victory at Ewood Park.

However, although clearly disappointed by the result, Hughes saw definite signs of improvement in his side's performances compared to recent displays, and he is convinced it's only a matter of time before his players turn the corner.

"We've just got to keep believing in what we are doing," said the Rovers boss, defiantly.

"What we need is a little bit of a change of fortune and hopefully don't concede first, as we have been doing recently, then I'm sure our belief will come flooding back, along with the qualities that we have.

"Every team will have a period like this.

"If you look at Everton, they started the season slowly and now they're on a run - we've just done it the other way round.

"But these things even themselves out over the course of a season.

"It's not a sprint, it's a marathon, and there's still a long way to go yet, so I fully anticipate we'll have a fine season."

Rovers dominated the opening 20 minutes yesterday and could have been several goals to the good, before Cole then fired Chelsea in front.

After that, Rovers fought valiantly in their quest to find an equaliser, but a combination of the woodwork and some fine goalkeeping, first by Petr Cech, and then his replacement Hilario, ensured Chelsea weathered the storm.

Hughes said: "I thought we showed real quality, certainly in the first half.

"I thought our play was really dynamic and there was good angles to what we were trying to do.

"David Bentley, in his position just off the frontman, was causing them a problem and in that period I thought we created some good chances.

"We hit the bar a couple of times and on another day, they would go in.

"But then unfortunately we got hit with a sucker punch.

"We talked about being wary of playing balls into people's feet in and around the halfway line, because they set traps for opponents and then look to break off that.

"That's a big part of their game and we got done by that.

"But I was more than happy with the first half performance, even though we found ourselves 1-0 down again.

"In the second half, I thought we showed good quality and created chances again, but it's difficult to draw Chelsea out.

"From our point of view, being 1-0 down to them isn't the ideal scenario because they are very adept at defending a lead, they got a lot of people behind the ball, and in the last 10 or 15 minutes they ran the clock down, which they are very good at.

"So it was very difficult for us to get the momentum we needed to get back on level terms.

"In saying that, both of their keepers had to make great saves to keep them in the game.

"Against lesser opposition, those chances we created would have been taken and we would have won that game, but we were up against one of the top teams in the country." and I thought overall we acquitted ourselves very well."