PLAYING a day later than the rest of the Championship is not the ideal way for Blackburn to bring in 2015 at Ewood Park, according to Gary Bowyer. But the free Saturday will have its perks for the Rovers boss.

A scouting mission awaits Bowyer this afternoon, with St Andrew’s his destination for Birmingham City v Wigan Athletic, to get a first-hand view of their next opponents.

“We’ll be training early ([this]) morning and I’ll be going straight in the car to go down to Birmingham because obviously we play Wigan a week later,” said the Rovers boss.

“It’s good from that point but obviously we’d all like to be playing on the same day.”

Bowyer also hopes the extra day will allow the bug that has affected his squad over the festive period to finally vacate their Brockhall training base.

“We’ve made real progress this week. With the bug that was flying around the camp there’s now only possibly one that’s struggling with that,” he said.

Of those coming back from injury he added: “Markus Olsson, is back training, Josh King’s back training so we’re looking good now.”

And Bowyer does not fear a depleted midfield despite Ryan Tunnicliffe’s return to Fulham, while question marks remain over Jason Lowe’s availability despite improvements with his latest foot injury.

“I think you saw last week we have enough bodies to cope.

“Corry Evans is available again and Jason Lowe has done ever so well in training this week and we’ll assess him further.

“We were really sad to see Tunners go. Full credit to the lad, he was outstanding as both a person and as a player here.We really wish we could have kept hold of him but we fully understand Fulham’s decision and respect that.”