BLACKBURN Rovers number two Ray Mathias felt his side paid a heavy price for poor defending after Stephen Warnock had given them the lead at Aston Villa last night.

Mathias said: “Not many teams will come to Villa Park and play as well as we did. We started off a little bit sloppy.

"Once we got going in the game, we felt we deserved to be 1-0 up.

”The disappointing thing is the first and second goals we conceded.

"For the first goal, we were in command of the situation but paid for sloppy defending and not closing people down - and the second goal again absolutely killed us.

”We were still in the game massively, taking the game to Villa, and on a couple of occasions could have got back in it but again a sloppy pass in the middle of the park cost us the third goal - and eventually the game.

”If we had got to half-time 1-0, we felt we would have won the game.

"We were in command of the situation up until their first goal, which would have given them a bit of a spur and a lift.

”They had a little spurt in the second half when they came at us but we got back in the game and were unfortunate to go down 3-2.”