DARRAGH Lenihan felt it was important Rovers came away with the minimum of a point after once again giving themselves a mountain to climb against Birmingham City.

Rovers were behind in just the third minute, as Lukas Jutkiewicz converted the penalty given away by goalkeeper Jason Steele.

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They could have been further behind before Danny Graham levelled the game up in first-half injury time with his 11th goal of the season.

Both sides had chances to win the game in the second half, but having lost points late in games in recent weeks, Lenihan felt it was important that Rovers left with the very least a point.

“We’ve been losing in games, getting it back into them and then losing late goals,” the 22-year-old said.

“So we have to say it is a good point because we didn’t lose.

“If you can’t win the game then you just don’t lose it and that is what we probably need to do more of.

“You have to have a balance from going forward and defending.

“In a few games we probably haven’t had that and we’ve lost it in the last few moments in the game. They had a good chance at the end, but we looked more solid I felt.

“We just need to build on this and push on.”

The result however, saw Rovers slip to second bottom of the Championship, though now just goal difference separates themselves and safety going in to the FA Cup tie with Blackpool on Saturday.

Slow starts were symptomatic of Rovers’ poor end to 2016, conceding in the opening 20 minutes in five games out of nine between November 19 and Boxing Day.

And Lenihan it is something they must overcome if they are to climb out of the bottom three.

He said: “They are a good team and we knew that under their new manager (Gianfranco) Zola that they try to play some good football.

“We didn’t have the best of starts with the goal.

“It is the thing we need to address, making a better start in games.

“We always seem to give ourselves an uphill challenge.

“We need to regroup in training next week just to make sure that we get a better start and stop conceding early goals.

“We had to change formation which I felt worked and that is how we got our goal.”

Lenihan, who was making his 50th league appearance for the club, started the game at right-back, before switching in to the middle of the defence after Charlie Mulgrew’s groin injury which will now be assessed.

While disappointed not to get all three, he felt that a draw in the end was probably fair given the balance of the play.

He said: “Obviously it was disappointing to get the draw but we need to just build on from this.

“We had a good few chances but so did they, but I’ll take the point.

“Last week it was frustrating losing to Ipswich 3-2, so we’ll just take this point and build from that.

“Fingers crossed in these next few games we’ll keep going and turn those draws into wins.”