WINGER Craig Conway believes Blackburn Rovers’ failure to put ‘games to bed’ is one of the big reasons why their Championship season has ended early.

Rovers will go into Saturday’s home clash with Nottingham Forest knowing they can no longer mathematically make the play-offs.

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Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at Birmingham City may have moved Gary Bowyer’s side above Forest into ninth.

But it left them 15 points off the top six with four matches of the campaign to play.

And a rueful Conway reckons Rovers’ display at St Andrew’s, where they twice let a lead slip and missed a host of clear-cut opportunities, summed up their season.

“Games like Tuesday’s are why we’re not up there,” said the Scotland international.

“I can think of seven or eight games off the top of my head that we should have won and didn’t.

“That’s a fact and that’s why we’re not up there.

“All we can do is take it on the chin, learn from it and focus on it for next season.

“But, while there are still a few games to go this season, we want to get as many victories as we can.

“So it’s on to Nottingham Forest and hopefully we can finish above them and that has to be the aim now.

“The manager has stressed to us that there are always aims and goals you can set yourself, personally and as a team, and that’s what we’ll be doing.

“We’re still ambitious, we don’t want to be sitting in mid-table or just in the top half of the table.

“We want to be up there challenging and that’s where I feel we’re good enough to be.

“But there’s no point talking about what could have been and what should been have because, at the end of the day, you’ve got to do it out on the park.

“And Tuesday summed up what we’ve been missing. We’ve got to put games to bed.”

Conway shot straight at Birmingham keeper Darren Randolph before crossing for Matt Kilgallon to score his first goal of the season.

But he wasted an even better opportunity after leading marksman Jordan Rhodes put Rovers back in front with his 18th goal of the campaign.

“I had a couple of chances, but especially the one in the second half, I really needed to be sticking that away, and Rudy (Gestede) will probably be feeling the same with his header,” said Conway.

“Had we put one of those chances away it would have made it 3-1 and it probably would have been game over.

“But then they go up the other end of the park and score straight after that.

“I suppose it’s another away game unbeaten but it’s so disappointing and results like that are probably why we’ve not been up there.”