BLACKBURN boss Graeme Souness today urged his players to keep the faith despite watching them crash to another damaging defeat at the hands of Spurs yesterday.

Rovers lost for the sixth time in seven Premiership outings after Dean Richards secured a 1-0 win for the home side with a first half header.

It's the worst sequence of results since Souness took charge and it leaves Rovers just three points above the dropzone.

But the tough-talking Scot believes it's only matter of time before the team's fortunes change -- providing his players don't panic.

"You go through phases where things happen for you and things don't, and things aren't happening for us at the minute but I'm not panicing," said Souness.

"I know I've got good players, they'll keep believing, and as long as that happens, then we'll be fine.

"It's not a case of us doing anything wrong, particularly, I think this is just a little phase we are going through.

"No-one can deny we should have got something from the Derby game and I think you could say the same about this one here.

"We made a mistake, conceded a poor goal, had chances in the second half when we dominated, but we just didn't get the breaks in front of goal and that sums up our luck recently. However, if we keep playing as we did in the last 25 minutes then we should be fine, so I'm not worried about the situation."

Rovers' latest setback came despite an impressive debut from new club record signing Andy Cole.

After completing his £7.5 million move from Manchester United on Saturday, the 30-year-old England striker had only trained once with his new team-mates prior to yesterday's game.

But he slotted in relatively comfortably at White Hart Lane and Souness already believes Rovers have started to benefit from his arrival.

"I thought he worked extremely hard, he had several chances and he was very unlucky with his header towards the end of the second half," said Souness.

"On another day that would have gone in and we would have got something out of the game.

"So, without going into detail, I can see what he's brought to our game already.

"He's given us some clever movement and he's also got great technique, which is something perhaps some people don't always say about Andy Cole.

"It's been a bit difficult over the last few days because we haven't been able to do much training because of the bad weather. But a lot of a striker's work is instinctive anyway and it's stuff you can't coach. It's how he sees it in that split second and he's proved in the last 10 years that he's as good as anyone around and far better than most.

"So I know he'll score goals for us."

As with Robbie Fowler's move from Liverpool to Leeds, however, Souness believes it could take four or five games before Rovers fans start to see Cole at his very best due to his lack of match action recently.

"It wouldn't take a brain surgeon to work out Robbie wasn't fit when he went to Leeds because he hadn't been playing regularly for two years and Andy's in a similar position because he hasn't been playing regularly this season, either," said Souness.

"So some people need five games, some people need six, and some need 10 to get match fit, but I imagine Andy will need four or five games before he can get himself to where he wants to be."

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