Blackburn scraped through into the fourth round of the FA Cup with a 1-0 win at Blue Square North team Blyth Spartans. The non-leaguers, 118 places below their Premiership opposition in the League pyramid, held out for 57 minutes until Carlos Villanueva curled a delightful free kick into the goal.

Rovers boss Sam Allardyce made eleven changes, but his team still dominated throughout.

However, they almost paid the price for missing a host of chances and not building on the Chilean international's strike.

With six minutes remaining Blyth had their one chance for an equaliser when substitute Andrew Wright was unmarked but could only volley wide.

For the Rovers chief, it was all about the result; he told Setanta Sports 1 "It was very comfortable except for the last five or ten minutes.

"We'd missed a lot of chances so there was always the danger they'd get that one chance, but we would have been disappointed not to have won this game with all the chances we had.

"I was a little disappointed with our finishing tonight, we should have been more clinical and scored a few more goals.

"We defended well but at the end we didn't know how to close a game down and kept giving the ball away and inviting pressure."