BLACKBURN Rovers boss Gary Bowyer’s lamented his side’s ‘luck’ after they were beaten 2-1 at Fulham today to extend their worrying winless start to the Championship season to six matches.

Rovers, who remain third from bottom, were two shockingly defended goals down in the first 30 minutes, scored by Ross McCormack and Moussa Dembele, and deservedly so.

But they dominated the Sky Sports-live clash thereafter with Fulham’s goalkeeper and man-of-the-match Andrew Lonergan producing a string of quality saves.

He was eventually beaten in the 68th minute by Jordan Rhodes, who had earlier hit the post, after the striker notched his first goal of the campaign by converting a penalty he had won.

And Lonergan was beaten again in the 86th minute when the ball rebounded off Grant Hanley and clearly crossed the line.

The officials, however, failed to give the goal and salt was rubbed into Rovers’ wounds when substitute Fode Koita crashed a late shot – one of 23 his team had in total – against the upright.

Bowyer said: “My main feeling is one of major, major disappointment. We’ve come here, against an expensive side, and we’ve been the better team by far.

“Overall it was our best performance of the season but it’s also been the same as what we performed at Brighton for a spell, and certainly Cardiff at home, and Huddersfield second half, when we created loads of chances. It’s just the actual converting of them.

“There were was a foul on Grant Hanley for the first goal, but it was too easy, and then I felt we let Steeley (Jason Steele) down for the second goal. He’d made a double save and then it stills drop to Dembele. 

“But it was a fabulous response from our lads and Lonergan was man of the match by a long way.

Lancashire Telegraph:

“He saved from (Nathan) Delfouneso, from Ben Marshall’s header, and Grant Hanley missed a free header in the first half, and we came in thinking, ‘we’re more than in this game and we could easily be level’.

“So we said to them, ‘you’re going to have to have a real, real good go and don’t leave anything in the dressing room and out on the pitch. Give it everything you’ve got’.  You saw they did that and nationally people have seen it as well.

“We hit the bar, we hit the post, we had one cleared off the line, and we had one that actually crossed the line.

“The officials didn’t give us anything all day and in my opinion they didn’t do their job properly with the goal that went over the line.”

Bowyer is on his longest run with without a win since taking over the Ewood Park reins in May 2013.

And he heads to Loftus Road on Wednesday, for an encounter with QPR, with pressure mounting.

But he said: “We’d be more concerned if we weren’t creating chances but you’ve seen the number of chances we’ve created there.

“You’ve got to keep the belief that it will turn for us as you’ve seen today that we’ve not lost the game through a lack of effort or a lack of commitment, we just haven’t been lucky enough in front of goal a little bit and certainly with certain decisions.

“I think you saw the passion and honesty that these lads have got for the club.”