OWEN Coyle believes a repeat of Blackburn Rovers’ last two away performances would give them a very good chance of making it three unbeaten on the road when they travel to Ipswich Town tomorrow.

Rovers haven’t won on any of their previous seven visits to Portman Road, a run stretching back to November 1994 where goals from Chris Sutton, Tim Sherwood and Alan Shearer saw Kenny Dalglish’s men to a 3-1 victory on their way to the Premier League title.

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The FA Cup third round success at Queens Park Rangers last time out backed up the draw at Huddersfield Town on New Year’s Eve, where Rovers were only denied three points by Nakhi Wells’ injury-time equaliser.

Both results were built on a strong and resolute defensive display, with Rovers playing much more on the counter-attack in a bid to stop leaking the volume of goals they had in a run of four consecutive defeats in December, where they shipped 11 goals.

The approach also paid dividends in the 1-0 home win over title-chasing Newcastle United on January 2, and Rovers are now eyeing a third straight win to start 2017 that could see them move out of the Championship relegation places.

And Coyle believes a similar performances to those at the John Smith’s Stadium and Loftus Road could result in more away-day joy.

“We need to make sure that we give very little away again, be solid without the ball and have a really good shape,” Coyle said of the trip to East Anglia.

“We have probably given up a bit of our attacking threat to do that but have come out on the right side of those fine margins, and if that’s what it takes then we will do it.

“We have to make sure that we are resolute without the ball against some very good players that Ipswich have, but knowing that we have that attacking threat and we have those goals in us.

“We will go there looking to win the game and that would then set us up for the run of games coming up at Ewood Park.”

After Saturday’s trip to Ipswich, four of Rovers’ next five games are on home turf, including an FA Cup fourth round tie against either Barnsley or Blackpool, who replay on Tuesday.

Rovers secured their first clean sheet of the season when Ipswich visited East Lancashire earlier in the campaign in a game which ended in a tense goalless draw.

The Tractor Boys are a tough nut to crack at home as well, having lost just nine of their last 59 league games at Portman Road since the start of the 2014/15 season.

And despite a so far disappointing campaign which sees them lying 15th, only Aston Villa outside of the top six Championship sides have lost fewer games on their home patch than Mick McCarthy’s men this season.

“Ipswich is always a tough game,” added Coyle, “The home game was very tight and I expect this to be very similar.

“We’ve shown that we can go home or away and sore goals.

“We need to make sure we’re solid, as we have been recently, because we have shown that we’re capable of getting a shut-out and scoring goals.”