Gary Bowyer delighted with 'outstanding' Blackburn

Blackburn Rovers boss Gary Bowyer is hoping his side will get the praise they deserve after dumping another Premier League team out of The FA Cup.

Bowyer’s team produced a performance capable of putting top-flight outfit Stoke City out of the competition, with an impressive display ending in a 4-1 win for Rovers.

That came on the back of a 3-1 victory against Swansea City at Ewood Park in the Fourth Round.

And with their name now confirmed in the hat for Monday’s Sixth Round draw, Bowyer wants to see his squad progress from here with praise still ringing in their ears.

“We’re just delighted to be in the next round, we’d love another home tie and then we’ll go from there,” said Bowyer, who saw a hat-trick from striker Josh King and a penalty from his strike-partner Rudy Gestede prove enough.

“But I thought, to a man, we were excellent today, outstanding.

“Full praise to the lads, I didn’t think they got enough credit for what they did in the last round, but they certainly should get it today.”

King’s performance certainly caught the eye and after only scoring one goal so far this season, Bowyer was pleased to see him take his new tally for the season to four.

Josh King steers past Jack Butland

The Norwegian striker, signed from Manchester United in 2013 after a previous loan spell, proved too hot to handle for Stoke and duly helped dump out Mark Hughes’ team.

“I’m delighted for him, he works hard and does his bit on the finishing, he wants to improve,” said Bowyer.

“We identified the areas where we might get success today and Kingy’s pace was one of those.

“The rest of the team played to his strength today and he showed fantastic pace and the pleasing bit was when he took both of those chances going through one-on-one.

“He had a long way to go, a lot going through his head, but he slotted both of them very, very well.

“He’s a top lad, he’s had a great education at Manchester United and we’ve seen what he’s capable of today.

“The challenge for him is to produce that on a more consistent basis.”

Despite the result and performance from his side, Bowyer was still reluctant to get too carried away though, with a busy scheduled coming up for his team in the Championship.

“We want to go game-by-game and see where we are when it comes to the draw,” he added.

“I understand the fans’ excitement, but there’s a long way to go yet.

“We’ve got a good squad, this was our third game in a week and we’ve got six in the next three weeks so we’ve got to be sensible with our approach and how we go about it.”

Stoke City players look distraught after conceding a fourth goal against Blackburn

Stoke boss Hughes himself had no complaints about the result on his return to one of his former clubs.

“He did okay and got our noses in front, but allowed Blackburn a few opportunities,” he admitted.

“We needed to get to half time in-tact and make a few changes at 1-1, even though we did have a foot-hold in the game, I wasn’t particularly happy with the performance up to that point.

“All in all, it was a very poor performance from ourselves but I have to give credit to Blackburn.

“I thought they were excellent on the day in terms of what they were trying to do and they executed their game plan far better than we ever attempted to.”