MARK Hughes was delighted for the way his team performed against Preston North End this Saturday.

Rovers comfortably defeated their Lancashire rivals 3-0 at Deepdale with the boss pleased with what he saw from his squad.

"It was excellent, it was exactly what I wanted from the game today," said Hughes after the match.

"There are seven days to go, we were a little bit disappointed with the performance in midweek so today we made sure we did alright and I thought we were excellent in all areas.

"We are seven days away from the start of the Premiership and if you are going to get results in the Premier League you need a good base.

"Today we showed we have a real defensive solidity to our play at the moment and that is what we need to take into the Premier League next week.

"Today we understood the importance of getting a good workout and I think we showed the benefit of the competitive games that we've had."

Rovers scored three goals that all came from set-piece play, despite the Rovers boss admitting that they hadn't worked on them.

"Three set-piece goals, I haven't done a great deal of work on set-plays so maybe that is the way forward. But if you get the ball in the right areas, which we have got the ability and the quality to do that, you get a target like Chrissy Samba in the box he's more than likely to get on the end of things and that is how it panned out so I'm delighted with that."