MANAGER Mark Hughes was far from impressed with the way his threw away a winning situation to end up on the losing side at Upton Park once again.

Roque Santa Cruz had given Rovers the lead on 20 minutes, capping off a fine moving involving David Bentley and Morten Gamst Pedersen to head past Robert Green.

But for whatever reason, at the home of the Hammers Rovers' defensive frailties are always exposed and that proved to be the case much to the disappointment of Hughes.

"It was a game we were quite comfortable in," said the Rovers boss post-match. "We went 1-0 up and weren't really in any danger without hitting any kind of level ourselves.

"It was a great goal, a well-worked goal, a great finish by Roque once again and at that point I felt reasonably confident that we would go on and win that game.

"But we allowed them back in, obviously disappointed with the equaliser and in the second half I have to say we were poor. On occasions we could have done better in certain situations.

"But I just felt maybe there wasn't enough drive in our play to try and win the game and to make the most of the opportunities that we had.

"As the away side you know at some point the home team will put you under a little bit of pressure but there wasn't a great deal of it in fairness, but they've capitalised on a bit of poor play from ourselves and they've got the second goal and they've won the game.

"We seem to be the right team at the right time for West Ham, we always seem to allow them to turn their period of poor results around, we've done it again for them."

The only bright point on an otherwise disappointing afternoon was that the result hasn't affected Rovers' prospects of claiming a place in Europe next season, as rivals Aston Villa also tasted defeat. But Hughes knows that Rovers can't afford any more slip-ups from now until the final game against Birmingham City on May 11th.

"It wasn't one of our better performances and on this occasion we haven't got anything for our efforts, but it may be not as bad as it could have possibly been, Villa have also been beaten so maybe there is not too much damage done.

"But we are running out of games, we need to win more games than we lose from now until the end of the season, so losing today it makes it more difficult for us."