BLACKBURN boss Graeme Souness today warned Rovers are ready to get 'ugly' as the countdown to the Premiership starts in earnest.

Souness felt Rovers were a soft touch for much of last season and he's ready to sacrifice his football principles in a bid to make his side harder to beat this time around.

"Hopefully, we've learnt some lessons from last season," said the Rovers chief.

"In some games we are going to have to scrap and roll our sleeves up if we're going to get results rather than just keep trying to play football, football, football, which I think we fell into at times last season.

"I think I've said in the past that we feel we've got a stronger squad this year than at any time we've been at the club.

"We haven't got a Damien (Duff) so we don't have that kind of flair but I think we're more rounded, we've got cover in certain positions and, hopefully, we'll be more difficult to play against than we have been in the past."

Rovers geared up for Saturday's curtain raiser against West Brom by beating Bray Wanderers 4-0 in Ireland at the weekend.

That was the last chance for Souness to experiment before the serious stuff gets under way in five days' time and the Rovers boss was pleased with the way his squad's final warm-up game went.

"It was another good work out for us," said Souness.

"There was a 10 or 15 minute period where they had us on the back foot but we weathered that storm and then got our goals which took the sting out of Bray a bit."

Meanwhile, Souness said he expects Steven Reid to be missing for up to 10 weeks after he underwent an operation on his broken metatarsal bone at the weekend.

Rovers have also denied showing any interest in signing Liverpool right back Steve Finnan, quashing fresh reports which surfaced over the weekend.

They are also still waiting for a reply from Excelsior to their official bid for striker Mounir El Homdaoui.