Russell Martin has heaped praise on Blackburn Rovers, labelling them 'a club with a plan' ahead of Southampton's trip to Ewood Park this weekend.

Rovers will be hoping for back-to-back wins for the first time since November on Saturday when the Saints travel to Lancashire. Southampton are coming off the back of a disappointing 3-2 defeat at Ipswich Town which has made their chances of automatic promotion very slim.

Southampton beat Rovers 4-0 back in December but Martin is not running any risk of underestimating them. He was full of praise for John Eustace, Gregg Broughton and Rovers' overall structure.

"(I think) The same I did when they came to our place. They play good football. They're very young, athletic, good energy," Martin said.

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"I think they're well capable of results like they had on Monday. I thought they were outstanding, having watched that back.

"But they've had a few really brilliant performances that haven't quite translated into results. They played really well against Ipswich the week before.

"We watched that on the TV and I felt they could have definitely got a result there and they didn't.

"So I'm sure John's been feeling very frustrated because they're doing some really, really good things and he's a really good guy.

"So I think they had a really good manager in John Dahl Tomasson who's gone and they've replaced him with a really good manager.

"Gregg Broughton is someone me and Gilly know from Norwich. He's a very intelligent and good person and understands what he's doing.

"It's a club with a plan and they're just going through a bit of pain early on in terms of what they're trying to build. But I think they're doing some really good stuff.

"As you said, they'll be desperate to get the manager's first home win. So it'll be a tough game on the back of their result.

"Obviously, people will look at it on the back of ours as well. We went to Ipswich.

"We're the team who want to be so brave and so aggressive for so long. And if we do that, more often than not we'll be more than okay. And that's the challenge.

"That's the challenge, to be the team we want to be wherever we go. And it's another challenge on Saturday. And it's a really, really exciting one."