BLACKBURN Rovers will go into tomorrow’s eagerly anticipated FA Cup encounter with Manchester City with confidence high on the back of one of their biggest results of the campaign.

That was the verdict of centre-back Grant Hanley after he helped Rovers record a 2-1 league win at Leeds on New Year’s Day.

While Hanley and his team-mates will be out to claim the scalp of last season’s losing finalists City in front of the live BT Sport cameras tomorrow, their main focus remains the same – to finish in the top six of the Championship.

And they now find themselves just two points outside of the play-off places after they beat Leeds to bounce back from their battling home loss to Birmingham City and make it back-to-back away victories for the first time this season.

Hanley said: “It was one of our best performances away from home.

“It could have even been more in the first half – the quality of our play, the chances that we had and we could even have had a penalty.

“We dug-in in the second half and were glad to come away with the three points.

“The Birmingham game was a one-off. We dominated the game but we lost three poor goals and that killed us.

“But we took the positives from that and it was a great reaction from the lads at Leeds.

“It was one of the biggest results of the season coming away to Leeds and getting the three points.”

Rovers boss Gary Bowyer gave his players the day off yesterday to recover before returning to Brockhall today to prepare for the big Ewood Park FA Cup clash with Premier League favourites City.

And Hanley, after playing a key role in preventing Leeds from making a second-half comeback, was glad of the rest.

He said: “We have to try and recover from the Leeds game first – and it’ll take some doing!

“The big games are coming thick and fast, we’ve just got to recover now and look forward to it.”