Premier League: West Brom 1 Blackburn 3

Nikola Kalinic scored twice and was then sent-off as Blackburn claimed their first victory under Steve Kean over West Brom at the Hawthorns.

Kean had seen his side take just one point from their previous two games after Blackburn’s owners, Venky’s, decided he should step up from the backroom staff to replace Sam Allardyce for the remainder of the season.

But this was a much improved display as Rovers stormed to a 3-1 triumph, .

West Brom had rallied after going behind early on, with Jerome Thomas cancelling out Kalinic’s first strike, but they ran out of ideas and are now nervously looking over their shoulders at the relegation zone.

These two teams came into the game on the back of poor runs of form, with West Brom having lost six of their last nine and Rovers having been beaten in their last three away from home.

Blackburn, who left want-away defender Christopher Samba out of their squad, took the lead after three minutes when Morten Gamst Pedersen’s long ball found Kalinic who found the far corner of the net.

The hosts did not have to wait long for the equalizer, however. James Morrison was the instigator with a driving run from deep before feeding Somen Tchoyi, and the winger’s perfect cross to the far post gave Jerome Thomas the easiest of finishes.

Blackburn regained the lead early in the second half through Kalinic. The visitors had been piling on the pressure, forcing a succession of corners, and the breakthrough came when Ryan Nelsen headed Pederson’s deep delivery back across goal for the Croatian to nod home.

And Rovers soon added a third when El-Hadji Diouf was allowed all the time he needed to pick out a man, with his namesake, Mame Biram, heading in from inside the six-yard box.

The pendulum swung back towards the hosts within a minute, however, as Kalinic was rightly shown a straight red card by referee Phil Dowd for a horribly late and high challenge on Paul Scharner.And both sides were reduced to ten men in the final moments as Gabriel Tamas crudely brought down Mame Biram Diouf.