BLACKBURN Rovers will be looking to secure a third league win on the bounce when Reading visit Ewood Park on Saturday, but on recent history it looks a feat that is difficult to achieve.

Few leagues can match the Championship for inconsistency and stringing together a block of wins is incredibly tough in such a competitive league.

MORE TOP STORIES:

After 14 games, 10 teams are separated by just five points at the top of the table, compared to a gap of six points between first and third in the Premier League after just nine games.

Back-to-back wins, achieved for the first time this season, have lifted Rovers to within one point of the top six, and a third straight victory would almost certainly take them into the play-off places.

But for Rovers three is most definitely the magic number. The three wins in a row they put together at the end of last season is the only time they have taken nine points from nine in a league campaign in the past seven years.

Before that sequence you have to go back to October 2007, when they won four Premier League games in a row as part of a seven game league and cup winning streak, for the last time they went beyond two straight league wins.

Since being relegated to the Championship for the 2012/13 season, Rovers have played 106 league matches and this is the 12th time they have won two in a row, but on only one of the previous 11 occasions have they gone on to win the third game.

In their first season back in the second tier they strung together two-game winning streaks on six occasions, but then came unstuck with draws against Leeds, Wolves and Brighton, and defeats to Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace and Watford.

Last season they won twice on the bounce five times, and on the first four occasions they drew with Burnley and twice to Sheffield Wednesday in the third game, as well as losing at Wigan, before finally making it three in a row in the final three league games of the season.

Those victories were part of a 12 game unbeaten league run, and if Rovers avoid defeat to the Royals on Saturday they will make it five league games unbeaten, which would equal the second longest stretch without defeat since the start of the 2012/13 season.

Rovers are far from the only team who struggle to string wins together in the Championship though.

Victory against Reading would make them only the ninth team this season to win three games in a row, but only Ipswich Town and Bournemouth have gone on to make it four in a row.