ROVERS boss Mark Hughes is ready to fight for Europe again, just a week after writing off his side's qualification hopes.

After defeat by Aston Villa in their last league outing, Hughes admitted a second foray in the UEFA Cup in successive years had all-but slipped through their fingers.

But after the qualification door through the FA Cup was firmly slammed in their faces following defeat to Chelsea on Sunday, Hughes has rekindled his hopes.

He said: "I said after the game last week against Villa that maybe, realistically, our chance for Europe had gone.

"Well I'm going to re-evaluate that in fairness, because we look at the fixtures we have left, and we've looked at the fixtures of other teams around us that are vying for those European places, and we've seen the teams they're up against and I think it's still a realistic target."

Rovers are currently in 13th position - nine points behind Tottenham, who occupy the last UEFA Cup spot - with two games in hand.

And Hughes was confident, if they could win those two games, Rovers would set themselves up for a grand finale, and a strong push for Europe.

He said: "A number of clubs still have to play eachother and take points off eachother, we've got a couple of games in hand that we've got to win and we're going to have a real go."

"If we win our next two games against Watford and Fulham I think we'd be something like two points behind Reading with the same amount of games so I think we're still very much in it.

"We'll have to win the vast majority of our games and see what happens.

"We play the likes of Spurs and Reading who we'll have to beat to overcome them.

"There's 18 points on offer for us and we need probably upwards of 15, so we'll have a go."

And that starts tonight with the visit of Aidy Boothroyd's basement boys, who are also coming off the back of an FA Cup semi-final exit, at the hands of Manchester United.

Hughes' side lost out at Vicarage Road in January and after also losing out to West Ham and Charlton already this season, he admitted it was time to wreak revenge against one of the league's struggling sides.

He added: "It's a difficult game for both teams because we've both had huge disappointments over the weekend and now we're going to have to go again. But we're the home team and we've got a little bit of a score to settle because we're obviously disappointed when we played them down at their place and we want to address that.

"Our form against sides below us hasn't been good for whatever reason. We seem to have done better against the top teams, so we need to win."