BLACKBURN Rovers boss Owen Coyle refused to single out Shane Duffy for criticism after he scored two own goals before being sent off in last night’s 2-1 defeat at Cardiff City.

Duffy twice diverted the ball past Rovers goalkeeper Jason Steele in the space of seven first-half minutes.

They were his second and third own goals in two games after also putting through his own net in Saturday’s 3-0 loss at Wigan Athletic.

And, after Danny Graham reduced the deficit, Duffy was shown a second yellow card in injury-time for kicking the ball at a Cardiff player after he gave away a foul.

The centre-back and winger Ben Marshall are going into the last year of their contracts and have turned down fresh terms put to them by Rovers.

And Coyle, when asked whether the duo are performing like they want to be at the club, said: “Nobody ever goes out to play poorly or nobody ever goes out not to give their best.

“Because of the speculation, you’ve got to understand there will be huge third-party interest, chipping away every day telling them this, telling them that.

“So of course there’s sometimes a subconscious that when you’re on the field, you’re not at your best for whatever reason.

“But I’m not going to stand here and single out players. We don’t work like that. Anything we say will stay in house.

“The important thing for Blackburn Rovers is that the team on the field is united and the team is wearing that shirt with pride. It’s a very prestigious jersey. It’s full of history, it’s full of tradition, and we want to have a team that is representative of that. I know we will get that team.”

Duffy will be suspended for Saturday’s home clash with Burton Albion and, when asked about the sending off, Coyle said: “He’d be the first to admit he shouldn’t have kicked that ball.

“I don’t think it’s malicious but he shouldn’t have done it.

“I’ve told him that in the dressing room in front of the group and he knows that himself.”

Lancashire Telegraph:

Rovers’ third straight league defeat to start the season means they remain rooted to the bottom of the Championship.

And, asked for his verdict on his side’s latest loss, Coyle said: “It is a mixture of emotions and certainly frustration is one of them.

“We said we wanted to give ourselves a platform in the game to be able to pick up points and again we haven’t done that.

“You can do all the preparation in the world and set yourself up and nobody is ever going to think you are going to score two own goals in the space of five minutes or so.

“Up to that point we were comfortable in terms of how we were doing against the ball but I still think we needed to do more with the ball in terms of threatening them.

“I felt we showed that in the second half and young Sam Gallagher I thought he did very well when he came on.

“It could have been easy being 2-0 down with two own goals and having not performed well in the first two league games to think, ‘here we go again’, but I felt in the second half we showed a lot of heart and a lot of fight.

“A number of the boys stood up to be counted, they kept pushing on, trying to be brave in possession and create chances and second half, obviously it took us a period to get the goal, but we had no threat the other end from Cardiff.
“We just had to find that elusive goal to get up and running, which we did, and all of a sudden two or three half-chances went flying across the goal for the equaliser.

“So there were some positive aspects to take particularly from toward the end of the first half into the second half but moving forward we have to give ourselves a chance.

“The own goals were bizarre but they happened and it was how we reacted to that and I think second half it was a good reaction.”