HOWARD Gayle has urged Blackburn Rovers to keep fighting for Premier League safety until the end after insisting belief is the key to pulling off the ‘Great Escape’.

The former Rovers striker is adamant Steve Kean’s men can still salvage their top flight status having had first hand experience of defying the odds himself.

Gayle was part of the Birmingham City squad who escaped relegation from Division one in 1983, despite being six points off safety with just six games to go.

The Blues won five of their last six games, including three straight away wins having won none previously, to secure survival with a 2-0 win at Southampton on the final day.

Ahead of Saturday’s Ewood Park visit of Norwich City, Rovers sit in a similarly perilous position, three points adrift of safety with just four games to go.

A disastrous run of five straight defeats, coupled with revivals for rivals QPR, Bolton and Wigan, has seen many writing Rovers’ survival chance off - but Gayle insists it is far from over.

He said: “I remember that 1983 season well. Everyone thought we were down and everyone wrote us off.

“The manager at the time, Ron Saunders, was a great motivator and he called a team meeting on the pitch to try and sort things out. We really were not playing at all well.

“He said we now had to adopt a siege mentality. He told us everyone had written us off and that it was up to us to prove everyone wrong.

“People were saying we deserved relegation and the only people who could show we didn’t deserve it was us.

“What followed was we went on an unbelievable run and incredibly stayed up. You look through the years and there have been plenty of similar examples where teams have escaped from looking dead and buried.

“Blackburn Rovers have to take confidence from that because the gap is only three points and there will be plenty more twists and turns.”

After Norwich’s visit on Saturday. Rovers have games at home against relegation rivals Wigan and trips to Chelsea and Tottenham left.

Former Liverpool striker Gayle, 53, who played at Ewood between 1987 to 1992, concedes the momentum is against Rovers but believes things can change in a split second.

“I still have no doubt that Blackburn will pull out of it,” he said. “The key now is keeping that belief and that is the fans, the players and the manager.

“If people start to think they are going down then they probably will go down. Believe they can stay up and I think they will.

“Rovers have not had the rub of the green in recent weeks, look at the Liverpool game. But I am sure they can win their home games and then surprise either Chelsea and Tottenham.

“QPR and Bolton could easily slip up in the games they have coming up. As long as the players are playing for the manager and the fans are right behind the club, which they have been, Rovers can definitely stay in the Premier League.”