The Reds suffered a 2-0 Championship defeat at Ewood Park with Rovers leading scorer Andri Gudjohnsen scoring in each half.

Despite registering 23 attempts during the match, only one was on target as Wrexham failed to produce the decisive moment when they got into key areas.

Wrexham won 4-1 at home to bottom of the table Preston North End the previous weekend but they came up short on their travels and Parkinson pointed to Windass - currently out with an ankle injury - as the type of player capable of turning fine margins into points.

"Josh is that player, like Gudjohnson, who the moments come and he takes them," said Parkinson, whose side slipped to 17th in the table.

"That's what he did for us time and time again (last season).

"The division is so tight. You don't watch games and you think one team is so much better than the other on the day.

"You watch games and think, a moment of quality.

"Of course, any team would miss their top scorer but while we wait for him to come back, it's like we did last week. Other players have got to step up to the plate."

Parkinson felt the defeat underlined why goalscorers remain the most valuable asset in football.

"It's the hardest thing in football, isn't it?" he added.

"That's why the strikers are the most sought after players because when a game's tight, someone's produced something which gives everybody a lift in the game and we just didn't have that."

Although he praised Blackburn's solid defending, Parkinson says Wrexham should have been more ruthless when they got into the final third.

"We need to go away from the game, look at the areas we've got into and have an honest appraisal of that," he added.

"Were they that good defensively or could we have done better?

"There's certainly times, moments I can think of where on a greasy surface, we needed to shoot lower and harder to make one come back off their keeper and we just didn't do that.

"But the lads have given us a lot of effort. They're as frustrated as I am because the end product was not where it needed to be."