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Callum Brittain was one of a number of Blackburn players who impressed against Newcastle on Tuesday night, and was unfortunate to come out on the losing side.

Old-fashioned full-back vs winger tussles are a dying art, but we witnessed one on Tuesday night with Brittain and Newcastle winger Anthony Gordon.

The former Everton man put the Magpies ahead on 71 minutes, but Rovers hit back eight minutes later through Sammie Szmodics to make it 1-1 before going on to lose on penalties.

Brittain was Blackburn's highest rated player as per WhoScored.com with a 7.5 rating.

Although Gordon scored, he no doubt left the pitch knowing he'd been in a game with the Blackburn full-back, who was good going both ways.

He's proved to be a good signing for Blackburn since Jon Dahl Tomasson brought him to the club in the summer of 2022 for around £1m, and it's proving to be a steal.

After a solid first season under Tomasson, Brittain has improved again this season.

Having only registered one assist last season, he would no doubt have seen room for improvement in that department.

Just two assists in the first 28 games of this season would have had him questioning himself, but he matched that tally in his first three games under John Eustace – under whom he has played every minute of every game so far.

John Eustace has given Callum Brittain a more attacking role

Eustace likes to play with a three-man defence. At wing-back, with Dominic Hyam playing behind him at right centre-back, Brittain has more licence to bomb forward.

The role of a right-back is certainly very different now than it was 10–15 years ago, and under Eustace, it appears that Brittain is going to be a beneficiary of the way the game has evolved.

Source: Transfermarkt

Of course, many right-backs have been. Just look at the way Jürgen Klopp asks Trent Alexander-Arnold to play at Liverpool.

It took just seven minutes for the first goal of the Eustace era to be scored by Tyrhys Dolan, who turned home Brittain's cross.

For the second goal, Ryan Hedges headed another Brittain delivery across the face of goal for Szmodics to nod in and double the lead.

Eustace's impact was immediate, and Brittain appeared to be the chief beneficiary of a tweak to the team.

After the game, Brittain told The Sun: "Playing five at the back gives you more of a licence to go forward.

"As a group, we've spoke about it. We turn down crosses and we come out too much, so I think we wanted to put the ball in dangerous areas, and we did that today and we caused them problems."

Brittain is vital to the way Eustace wants to play

As he alluded to, playing as a wing-back means he needs no second invitation to get forward and put crosses in.

With Sam Gallagher, a big swashbuckling striker to aim at, it's no wonder Eustace wants crosses put into the box. Szmodics is useful in the air as well, and they have a big team when it comes to set plays.

When Blackburn played in the Premier League throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Ewood Park was always a tough fixture, even for the best teams in the league.

Playing a direct yet very effective style won them the Premier League title in 1994/95 with Chris Sutton and Alan Shearer, both of whom were excellent in the air, receiving the right service.

If Rovers didn't play to their strengths, they wouldn't have scored 49 goals between them during the campaign.

In the Premier League, Blackburn built an identity under Kenny Dalglish.

Tomasson moved away from it a little and wanted to focus more on keeping the ball and neat build-up play.