They may have made hard work of it over the past week or so, but back-to-back wins over Middlesbrough and Hull City have finally got Blackburn Rovers up and running in the new Championship campaign.

Those six points, coming off the back of defeats to Charlton Athletic and Fulham in their opening two games of the Championship season, have seen Blackburn drag their way up the standings into a position that is much closer to where manager Tony Mowbray, and plenty of others around the club, believe they should be this season.

Blackburn are one of a number of sides who have designs on a push for the top six this season, and they currently sit 11th in the table, four games into the campaign thanks to those two wins this week.

If Rovers are to push for a place in the top six this season then it feels as though there is one clear area that they need to improve on from their previous campaign, and these first two victories do seem to suggest that Mowbray's men are heading in the right direction in that respect.

Both of the club's league wins this season have come by a score of one goal to nil, and the way those wins have come will be a huge sign of encouragement.

Against both Middlesbrough and Hull, Blackburn have managed to ride out plenty of pressure in deep into the 90 minutes and beyond, and that is a very different story to last year.

During the 2018/19 campaign - their first back in the Championship after a solitary year in League One - Rovers dropped points to goals conceded in the final ten minutes of league games on no fewer than nine occasions.

Those late goals cost them as many as 16 points, which, if you were to add it to the eventual total of 60 points the club ended the campaign, would have put them right to the mix for a play-off spot at the very least.

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The fact, therefore, that Rovers have been able to hold onto a one-goal lead in their last two games, appears to suggest that Mowbray and his side have started to learn their lesson from last season, and that they will be a far harder backline to break down over this campaign than they were the last.

It is perhaps also worth noting that, those last two wins have come following the reunion of arguably Blackburn's most reliable central defensive partnership since their return to the division, in the form of Republic of Ireland duo Derrick Williams and Darragh Lenihan.

Given that both of those two were a regular feature in Rovers' backline this season, it certainly seems to be the case that the squad themselves are determined to avoid a repeat of last season's frustrations, and with that experience under their belts, they will be determined not to cost themselves dearly in that respect again this year.

Admittedly, it is early days in the season, and two games are never going to be a fair reflection of a whole campaign, but if Rovers can continue to show the same sort of defensive solidity they have displayed recently, then the numbers do suggest that a seemingly unlikely push for the play-offs this year, might not be quite as far away as it may currently seem.