MARK Hughes watched Craig Bellamy transform Blackburn's Carling Cup fortunes last night then declared: "I'm absolutely delighted that he's here!"

The Rovers boss was full of praise for all his players as they stormed into the fourth round with a 3-0 victory over Leeds United at Ewood Park.

But it was Bellamy who stole the show with a hat-trick of assists despite not entering the fray until eight minutes into the second half.

"I've worked with Craig for a long time and knew what he could bring to us so I'm absolutely delighted that he's here," said Hughes.

"We needed to get him on the pitch and everybody can see what an impact he has on us.

"He's a quality player and, for us, we paid top dollar and I was more than pleased to do it. The opportunity to get a player like Craig Bellamy through the door was too good to miss.

"When he's confident there's not many that have the ability that he has. He is a demanding personality but that's what makes him such a good player because he doesn't accept second best and neither do I. It's great to have him at the club.

"But he's not quite there fitness wise so it's important that he gets good back-up from the rest of his team and he certainly had that this evening.

"I thought we were all excellent. We're on a decent run, we're playing with confidence and we've had great performances this evening from a lot of people."

Hughes brought in Brett Emerton, who opened the scoring, for David Bentley but made no other unforced changes from Saturday's Premiership win over Birmingham City.

And this policy paid off as Paul Dickov and Lucas Neill added further goals to ensure Blackburn's fifth win in six games.

Hughes added: "I picked a strong side tonight and against Huddersfield in the first game because I want to progress in the competition.

"I feel it's better to start what you perceive as your strongest side and get the job done. To do it the other way round sometimes backfires because you throw your most senior players on later in the game and they end up working harder trying to chase the game, so that's always been my way of looking at it.

"Leeds made changes which maybe affected their rhythm and maybe this game wasn't a priority for them. It was for us and that was maybe that was the difference."