MARK Hughes insists his Blackburn Rovers players won't be out for retribution against Bolton tonight despite their controversial defeat in the corresponding fixture last year.

Wanderers won at Ewood in the Premiership last February when a dive from El-Hadji Diouf conned referee Steve Bennett into awarding the a penalty.

Although Diouf's spot kick was saved by Brad Friedel, he followed up to hit the only goal of the game from the rebound.

Blackburn boss Hughes hopes to extend his side's unbeaten run to seven games when the sides meet today (5.15pm kick-off), and he says that's the only incentive for avenging last season's defeat.

"That's water under the bridge," said Hughes. "At the time we were a bit upset with the goal that we conceded and the penalty situation.

"But I thought, on the day, we played well enough to win the game anyway so we shouldn't have ever been in the position to allow ourselves to be beaten by a dubious penalty.

"It's all forgotten about now, though. We've played them against since and we put in a good performance at the Reebok, where we drew 0-0, which was a decent result.

"We are playing well at the moment, we are going into the game on the back of a six-match unbeaten run, so we would hope to get the three points."

The last time the sides met was in September, but it was a Lancashire derby to forget as the teams played out a dull goalless draw in front of the Sky cameras.

That game marked the last start Matt Jansen made in a Rovers shirt, and his lack of first team opportunities finally forced him to be released by the club on Wednesday.

But Hughes has revealed that he won't be rushing into the January transfer window market to replace the striker.

He said: "It doesn't really affect my thinking on that. If something gets put in front of me which I think will help us from now until the end of the season, or maybe even longer than that, then we'll look at it seriously.

"But there's nothing in the offing as yet.

"We're out there looking and you obviously get information about players every day because it's January, for goodness sake, so you'd expect that.

"So things get put before us and we make decisions based on what we see. But there's nothing we are actively pursuing at the moment."

To that end, Hughes dismissed speculation linking him with Celtic's Bulgarian star Stilian Petrov.

"I went to watch a Celtic match and people put two and two together and made five," said Hughes. "So I don't really need to comment any further on that."