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Hughes: Expects tight race

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Mark Hughes fears that failure to qualify for Europe could see Blackburn miss out on a number of their summer targets.

Rovers slipped to ninth in the Premier League table as a result of Saturday's 2-1 defeat at West Ham and are now in danger of missing out on a place in the Intertoto Cup.

With Aston Villa and Manchester City already signalling their intentions to enter the competition, Hughes knows that his side need to overhaul their rivals if they intend to entice quality recruits to Ewood Park over the summer.

Attraction

"Qualifying for Europe is important to us because it really helps with recruitment," he conceded in the Lancashire Telegraph.

"If you've got the attraction of European football, then it helps when you are trying to attract a better quality of player.

"Ideally, we would like to present that to players if we are able to attract the right quality.

"There are still games to play, and we've still got games we feel we can win, so it's not over yet."

Difficult

Hughes left Upton Park at the weekend frustrated after seeing his side throw away a 1-0 lead and admits that missing out on Europe would be a crushing blow for the club.

"I say week in, week out we need to achieve things, and we need to be in Europe every year, because it helps us as a club, and as a team, to develop," he said.

"It's going to be more difficult than ever this year because of the way the league has panned out, with the top half beating the bottom half more often than not, so it's going to take more points.

"And a lot of teams have applied for the Intertoto place so I think it's going to go right down to the wire.

Drive

"We have to make it a little bit easier for ourselves. I think we lacked a little bit of drive in our play, and we allowed West Ham, who were struggling for a little bit of confidence themselves at times, back into it.

"If we'd have capitalised on that then I feel sure we would have won the game comfortably. But we weren't at the level we needed to be."

Rovers will get the opportunity to put the disappointment of Upton Park behind them when they face Wigan on Saturday, but are likely to be without Brett Emerton after the midfielder limped off at half-time against the Hammers.

"Brett had a recurrence of his groin injury so had to come off," Hughes told the club's official website.

If Emerton fails to make the Latics encounter then he is also unlikely to travel to China for Australia's forthcoming World Cup qualifier on 26th March.