PAUL Lambert has hailed the ‘incredible’ goalscoring record of Jordan Rhodes – and is relishing him becoming his new talisman at Blackburn Rovers.

Lambert, who took over the Rovers reins on Monday, has enjoyed prolific strikers at his previous two clubs Norwich City and Aston Villa.

Grant Holt scored 70 goals in 130 games as Lambert hauled Norwich away from the League One drop zone to a 12th-placed Premier League finish in the space of three seasons.

The back-to-back promotions led to the former Scotland international being head-hunted by Villa where his £7m buy Christian Benteke, who moved to Liverpool in the summer for £32.5m, netted 34 goals in 67 appearances in his first two seasons.

Rhodes’ record for Rovers is even better. He is just 18 goals away from bringing up a 100 for the club after scoring 82 times in 157 matches following his club record £8m move from Huddersfield Town in August 2012.

And Lambert said: “His goalscoring is incredible. He’ll be every bit as important as Benteke and Holt were at Aston Villa and Norwich.

“He will certainly be a massive player for me and the football club. If he can keep his goalscoring record and we start to help him, then it’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

Rovers are currently 11 points behind the play-off places after winning three, drawing eight and losing five of their first 16 Championship games.

And asked about the quality of the squad he is inheriting from Gary Bowyer, Lambert said: “On paper it looks very good. The results? Probably too many draws.

“I think Gary Bowyer has done a terrific job here under hard circumstances. It’s been tough so Gary deserves a lot of credit for that.

“It’s up to us and the staff to try and get the best out of the current group.

“We’ll maybe play a bit differently and different things will be introduced in training but they’ll get used to it.”