Slaven Bilic felt his side should have been further ahead at the break – but was delighted to secure a first home win of his Baggies tenure.

Three goals in 18 first-half minutes turned the game on its head as Matty Phillips, Jake Livermore and Grady Diangana got their names on their scoresheet.

That came having fallen behind after 26 seconds before Bradley Johnson hauled Rovers back in to the game with his goal in first-half injury time.

It was an opening 45 minutes in which the Baggies dominated and the Croatian felt his side, who stretched their unbeaten start to six games, should have been further ahead.

“We are a new team, we are still gelling, we still have those phases where we can improve,” he said.

“If you are sterile it is difficult to improve but we are not that. It makes me happy because those things we are showing, not consistently throughout 90 minutes, we can get better.

“We can’t even talk about slow start, we didn’t even start, straight away it’s a goal. Especially at home the crowd is expecting to win, it affects the team psychologically.

“Blackburn smelt it and were on top of us, in those moments we need something.

"We scored a great goal, great combination, from then until the end of the half it was top football in every aspect of the game, creating chances, defending well, pressed them well. We stopped them in our half. It’s stupid to say, it sounds greedy, it should have been even more than 3-1. But it should be enough.”

Rovers improved  after the break, going close to an equaliser when Stewart Downing hit the post, Kyle Bartley turned a right-wing cross on to his own bar and Dack had a goal disallowed.

“We knew they would come back fired up and they were, credit to them in the first 15 minutes we were playing like it was added time,” Bilic said of the second period.

“I said at half time ‘it’s 0-0, play a normal game’, but we were happy to waste time a little bit, we weren’t active, we weren’t on the front foot.

“They were in our half of the pitch but after 15 minutes we gained control and created chances to kill the game off .

“There’s always a danger that you concede a goal, they have good players. We managed the game well.”