Stoke City boss Mark Robins hailed ‘top goalkeeper’ Viktor Johansson after his crucial saves against Rovers.
Joe Rankin-Costello thought he had found a last-gasp equaliser at the bet365 Stadium but Johansson was the thorn in Rovers’ side for the second time this season.
The goalkeeper had earlier made another fine stop to tip Todd Cantwell’s strike onto the woodwork.
"Fantastic saves,” said Robins. The one where he's dived to his left and it's in, but he's got there and clawed it out. I thought it was really good.
“His handling was good, his communication was good as usual, his kicking was really decent. He kicked it out once I think but his kicking was generally pretty good.
"He's a top goalkeeper. We had a conversation yesterday because they'd had three shots on Saturday and we conceded three goals - and he's come and kept a clean sheet.
“That's the response you want from your goalkeeper. He's a top kid, a top goalkeeper and I'm delighted we've got him."
It was an important result for the Potters, who maintained a four-point cushion above the relegation zone with nine games to go.
“Really hard fought,” the manager insisted. “We played a Blackburn team who had decided they were going to sit in in the first half really, or defend strongly, the way they needed to defend against us.
“But we started really brightly. I thought we moved the ball well, we moved it at speed, we got into good positions. We got ourselves a couple of good chances and took one of those, we got our noses in front.”
He added: “They started to press a little bit harder and the second half was a lot more difficult because they went longer.
“They tried to get bodies higher up the field and we ended up with the lack of energy, I suppose, probably just hanging on to what we had got.
“I would like us to get to the point where you can go and kill a game off and it doesn’t matter when a team is doing that to you. But that is where we are at the moment.
“Everything that they threw at us, we dealt with. We headed it out the box, sometimes it was a scuffy clearance. We got blocks on things that we needed to, heading things out from corners. That side of the game is brilliant.”
