Rovers Chairman John Williams has spoken of his satisfaction in quickly securing the services of Sam Allardyce.

Less than 48 hours after the departure of Paul Ince, Sam Allardyce took his first training session at Brockhall after putting pen to paper on a three-year-deal with the Ewood Park club.

Speaking exclusively to Rovers World, the Rovers Chairman was pleased to have concluded the deal quickly: "I'm naturally relieved, we are in a precarious position and time was of the essence for us having made the decision that we had to part company with Paul, which was a very difficult decision for us.

"We were desperate for Paul to succeed and I know he will, I'm sure he will bounce back, but the league table doesn't lie, we find ourselves, after a reasonable start, in a what could only be described as an ongoing slide and it had to be arrested.

"And with a vital game coming up on Saturday we had to move quickly and I'm delighted that Sam is here 48 hours before that game and supervising training today."

Allardyce will take his place in the Ewood Park dugout on Saturday when Rovers take on Stoke City, the first of a huge set of games for the club.

"I think the Stoke game is the first of the remaining 21 games, they are all cup-finals and we've been able to not only get Sam and bring in Neil McDonald as his assistant, so we've hit the ground running and hopefully there'll be a result on Saturday.

"If ever we needed to pull together, this is the time," added Williams.

Rovers World subscribers can see the rest of our exclusive interview with the Chairman here, and be able to listen to the press conference live on the internet from 4.00pm GMT.