Captain welcomes lay-off

A free weekend means they will have to wait until Tuesday to try and get the midweek dip at Blackburn out of their system.

That match completed a run of four matches in two weeks, all of which manager Steve Evans started with the same 11, and they lacked their usual drive in the first half at Ewood Park.

They'll now get a couple of extra days to kick back and with quality opponents in Derby, Wolves and Watford next up, it is perhaps a timely break and a chance to put the defeat in the “out” tray.

“Is a free weekend a good thing or a bad thing? It's probably a good thing,” Morgan told the Advertiser.

“If we'd won it would have been a bad thing because we'd have wanted to keep the momentum. Because we lost, we can go away and work on a few things now, get a bit of a rest as well. We've put a lot into the games and a break will do us no harm.

“The masses of effort we'd put into the last three or four games showed a little bit in the first half against Blackburn. It didn't really happen for us on the ball either so it made it more difficult. They were coming at us and we couldn't retain the ball. We kept it better in the second half and as a team we were better.

“We were a bit disappointed with the way we played but we've just come off the back of a good run and we've got to keep our heads up and go again.”

With 16 matches left, Morgan also sees plenty of reasons to be positive.

“You would have looked at last Saturday's match against Ipswich and thought we might have struggled against them but we won that game. That sets us up to believe we can win any game that comes but there's no hiding it, it's a difficult run of fixtures right through to the end of February.

“We'll do what we always do and that's give our best and try and pick up results.

“Even against Blackburn, when we were not at our best, we narrowly lost 2-1 so that shows where we've come and how we've equipped ourselves in this division.”