STEVE Kean has told his “devastated” Blackburn Rovers side ‘play like that and we will stay in the Premier League’ after Manchester City deepened their relegation woes.

The defiant Rovers boss insists Edin Dzeko’s 75th winner should have been ruled out for an offside against Mario Balotelli as City's 1-0 win extended Rovers winless run to 11 matches.

Up to 100 Rovers fans gathered outside the ground post match to protest against their Indian owners, Venky’s, with chants of ‘we want Venky’s out’ and ‘we want our Rovers back’.

Bar a shaky first 25 minutes, Kean’s men out-battled City for the majority but a lack of a killer instinct saw Dzeko punish Rovers with his first Premier League goal.

The defeat leaves Rovers just one point clear of the relegation zone with four games to go but Kean remains adamant his side will preserve their top flight status.

He said: “We were very hard done by, we had a goal offside with Balotelli standing offside in front of Robinson.

“After the first 15 minutes when we were a little bit wobbly, we were in the ascendency. We feel as a group if we can go out and play like that against Bolton on Saturday we can get a win.

“We are gutted we didn’t get anything because I thought we were excellent. Without a shadow of a doubt, if we play like that we will stay up.

“We have a good group of lads. They are devastated but they are going round to each other and saying ‘let’s go again’. If we play like that we have a great chance.”

Failure to beat Bolton at Ewood Park on Saturday could see them drop into the bottom three for the first time.

Bolton are the Ewood visitors before a key away game at West Ham, and Kean believes his side have the right character to bounce back from their disappointment.

Kean said: “We have given everything and we are gutted. Every single point has been difficult to get but we gave City’s back-four a hard time.

“Psychologically it would be tough to take being in the bottom three but we have a good group and strong characters if we play like that we will get points.

“Might have had a point and been disappointed with it. But we didn’t have a fantastic number of chances.”

David Dunn is a doubt for Bolton’s visit on Saturday after being taken off with a calf injury.