WELL this is becoming a bit of a habit isn’t it?

A second East Lancashire derby win on the spin at Ewood Park and this time we didn’t even play as well as we know we can do.

I’ll be the first to admit that Rovers probably should have been out of sight long before Scott Arfield calmly slotted the ball home from 20 yards and then ran the full length of the pitch to celebrate with the Clarets faithful in the Darwen End.

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But at the end of the day, goals win football matches and despite our hosts having a hatful of decent chances – the clearest falling to Tom Lawrence who somehow managed to hit outer space when free on goal – they didn’t take a single one.

As is sometimes the case with big derby games, the football on show wasn’t the most exciting but, as we have done so many times already, we grew into the game and had a couple of spells where we played well.

It wasn’t a game where many stood head and shoulders above the others but one man who did was Joey Barton who I thought was superb.

This new, calmer St Joey got rattled only once and even then it was because he had been denied a penalty and then tripped by Rovers skipper Grant Hanley.

In the middle of the park he bossed things for me and that extra touch of class meant that we just about had the edge in the most important part of the pitch.

Honourable mentions to for Arfield, Ben Mee and Tom Heaton with the latter two part of a defence that stood resilient under plenty of pressure from our neighbours.

The result not only gave us bragging rights but lifted us to second temporarily before results on Saturday afternoon saw us drop back down to third but only on goal difference.

The results have been good in the last four matches with three wins and a draw since the defeat to Reading and we’re back at the Turf for the next two, which I see as very winnable.

I’m tempted to say we should now switch our attention to those two games – starting with the visit of Huddersfield on Saturday – but gloating about this weekend’s win over the once-noisy neighbours is just too much fun.