Hughes accuses Palace on bust-up

Blackburn 1-0 C Palace

Mark Hughes has fuelled the row over an alleged tunnel bust-up in Blackburn's midweek win over Crystal Palace.

Palace boss Iain Dowie claimed a Blackburn player elbowed one of his players at half-time at Ewood Park.

Dowie refused to confirm the identity of the player, amid rumours that Robbie Savage was involved, but Blackburn boss Hughes said his conscience was clear.

"None of my coaching staff or our management side threw punches - maybe that can't be said for them," he said.

Hughes admitted he heard raised voices in the tunnel from the dressing room, but denied wrongdoing by any of his staff.

"You can understand Crystal Palace's frustration, they have not won that many games and it looked like another one was slipping away from them and they reacted in the tunnel, which was disappointing," he said.

After Blackburn's 1-0 win, Dowie said one of his youth players had been elbowed by a Blackburn player.

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"All I'm saying is a 19-year-old boy was clipped round the head by an elbow," he said.

"Things happen in the tunnel and you get on with it but you want it between senior players and not young boys.

"If he wanted to do that to one of our senior boys or me I wouldn't have had a problem."

Savage was surrounded by Palace players at half-time at Ewood Park on Wednesday, furious at his challenges on Wayne Routledge, and there was pushing and shoving after other Blackburn players became involved.

But Savage denied he had been involved in an altercation.

"I didn't see anything. We were walking down the tunnel, I went in the dressing room and that was it," he said.