Lucas Neill is staying at Ewood Park after Blackburn Rovers decided against the defender moving to Liverpool.

"Much of the window has been consumed with basically resisting offers for our better players," said Rovers boss Mark Hughes.

"A lot of Thursday was concentrated on actually resisting the overtures from Liverpool.

"In the end I think we showed to Lucas that possibly we were more committed to him than Liverpool were prepared to commit and I think he understood that in the end.

"He is with us and we are still very hopeful that he'll sign a new contract but I think now we can just concentrate on playing our football and put this episode behind us."

The Rovers boss has no qualms over continuing to pick Neill from now until the end of the season.

Hughes added: "I think we saw from his performance at the weekend that he was fully focused.

"I gave him the armband because I knew that side of his character is good and he was able to deal with the pressure that was surrounding him leading up to the window closing.

"We'll see him on Monday and he'll approach his job in exactly the same way as he did before the interest."