Jon Dahl Tomasson explained that a desire to overload in wide areas and shore up the defence was behind Blackburn Rovers' change in formation.

The head coach switched to a 3-5-2 shape against Huddersfield Town, moving Harry Pickering inside as a left-centre-back with Ben Chrisene making his debut at wing-back.

It gave Rovers extra cover in the centre of defence but also added more opportunities to overload in wide areas, with Hayden Carter and Pickering trying to pull the Huddersfield block apart with runs into the channels.

That was punctured slightly when the former was forced off through injury. The same then happened to Pickering later in the game.

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Tomasson also made the move to add more defensive security to bolster a defence that has shipped a lot of goals recently.

"If you look at how we have been playing lately, there was not a lot of change on the ball," he explained.

"Defensively, we had an extra man. We have been conceding goals, not because we've been outplayed but we have had more players than the opponent in almost every situation where we have conceded.

"The idea was to put an extra player and hopefully that would help.

"When Hayden got injured, we couldn't make an overlap on the right in the same way with the central defenders. That change was early after we started bright, I thought they were very good.

"That moment changed the speed of everything. There were overloads in those areas and I think the players did that very well in the first 15, 20 minutes."

On Chrisene's debut, he added: "I had to take him off with Sam Gallagher because that's the longest they have played in a while," he said.

"He last played in November, it was a good start for him. He played 90 minutes then so it's been a while, he's not ready for that yet."