EVERTON boss Walter Smith admitted his struggling Toffees had only themselves to blame after crashing to their third straight Premiership defeat.

The visitors missed a host of chances before ultimately sinking to Ciccio Grabbi's first half strike.

And disgruntled Toffees fans even turned their anger on Smith with mocking chants of 'You don't know what you're doing' when he threw on a couple of late subs.

"We've only got ourselves to blame for losing a game that we dominated so much," said Smith.

"It was difficult to understand how we lost after creating all those chances.

"Missing the penalty seemed to lift Blackburn whereas we lost our way after that.

"As for the boos, that's expected if the team is not winning. The manager gets the blame."

One crumb of comfort for the Goodison boss, however, was the performance of former England legend Paul Gascoigne in what was his first start since last November.

"I thought Paul had an excellent game. He showed that he still has the desire and he was easily our best player," added Smith.

Meanwhile, Blackburn skipper Garry Flitcroft was delighted with the result as Rovers roared up to seventh in the table.

But he admitted it wasn't exactly a vintage performance from Graeme Souness's patched-up side.

"It was a big three points for us and a good three points," said Flitcroft.

"They had a few good chances as you'd expect.

"But it was just a grind for us in the end and we were delighted to finally get home."

Rovers are now just three points off top spot, although they have played a couple of games more than most of their rivals.

But Flitcroft insists they deserve to be even higher when you look back over the first seven games.

"I still think we should be higher up the league than we are," said Flitcroft. "We could have beaten Derby, we should have got a point at Sunderland and we've generally created a lot of chances.

"I'd start worrying if we weren't creating those chances but now Ciccio has scored, hopefully, Matty can't start firing too."