GARY Bowyer says he has been given no indication he will have to sell any of the star players that took Blackburn Rovers to within touching distance of the play-offs this season.

With Rovers’ Premier League parachute payments being halved and Financial Fair Play coming into force in January, Bowyer admits he will have to trim his squad in the summer.

But the Rovers boss, who will soon fly to India for a pre-planned meeting with the club’s owners Venky’s, does not expect to have to let any of his key men leave.

Bowyer said: “I’ve got a trip planned to India but there’s no indication from the owners at all that we’ve got to sell any of our assets.

“We’ve got to trim the squad, that’s for sure, and there are additions I’d like to bring to the team.

“We will work very hard to make sure we have a good summer.”

Rovers have nine senior players out on loan and the club’s wage bill would be reduced significantly if players who are not seemingly in the manager’s plan could be moved on.

Bowyer believes the club is still at least two transfer windows away from having a squad ‘back to where it should be’.

But he added: “It’s all right saying, ‘he’s not in my plans and he’s not in my plans’, but rightly so they’ve got a contract and the club has to honour that contract to them.”

Saturday’s thrilling 4-3 home victory over Wigan Athletic ensured Rovers finished the Championship season in eighth on 70 points, two points off the play-offs.

And Bowyer is confident his side, who ended the campaign unbeaten in 12 and on the back of a three-match winning run, have put the building blocks in place to launch a sustained push for the top six next season.

“We can’t and we won’t rest on what we’ve achieved,” said Bowyer, who took over the Ewood Park hotseat full-time last May after he steered the club to survival as caretaker boss.

“We’ve laid the foundations for rebuilding the club again and that was my aim at the start when I first took over.

“I wanted to get us back to being competitive and try to get us on a level playing field and keep us out of the headlines for the wrong reasons.

“I think we’ve achieved that but we’ve got a lot of progress to make still and a lot of work to do.”

Seventy points would have been enough for Rovers, who won five of their final seven matches, to finish in the play-offs last season.

And Bowyer said: “That shouldn’t be undervalued.

“If you consider what we’ve had to do throughout the season, in terms of making changes to the squad, then that’s progress.

“But it’s only a starting block.”