NIKOLA Kalinic could make his Blackburn Rovers debut in the Carling Cup trip to Gillingham as Sam Allardyce was left bemoaning his side’s lack killer instinct in Saturday’s Premier League opening day defeat.

The £6million Croatian striker will be in full time training at Brockhall for the first time today, after returning from Zagreb with his Visa late on Friday, and is expected to feature at the Priestfield Stadium a week on Tuesday.

A frustrated Rovers boss Allardyce will hope the presence of Kalinic will help ease their obvious problems in front of goal, after seeing goals from Emmanuel Adebayor and Stephen Ireland hand big-spending Manchester City a fortuitous 2-0 victory at Ewood Park on Saturday.

Former Rovers stopper Shay Given was in sparkling form between City’s posts but Allardyce knows his mis-firing side should still have made more from a dominant first half performance.

He said: “They had the strongest spine in Shay Given, when we beat everything else we couldn’t beat him. That’s what you pay the million pounds for.

“Everyone tells me your strikers win you game but your goalkeepers win you games as well. He has contributed as much to the three points as Adebayor’s goal today.

“If you are peppering the opposition’s goal as much as we were then you would hope you score. When you look at the shots we had you would want to convert at least one or two of them into goals.

“It wasn’t our day in terms of converting those chances into goals. It was a really good response in terms of making chances.

“The sad thing was we didn’t convert those chances into a goal and have ended up losing 2-0.”

Rovers have struggled in front of goal all summer, having played a lot of it with just two senior strikers in the wake of Roque Santa Cruz and Matt Derbyshire’s summer departures.

Franco Di Santo was brought in on loan from Chelsea late on though and, with Kalinic now finally at Rovers, Allardyce will hope his improved striking options change their goal scoring fortunes.

Kalinic’s £6million switch from Hadjuk Split was agreed a fortnight ago but his involvement so far around the training ground has been limited due to work permit issues.

Now sorted, Kalinic will be playing catch-up in terms of fitness having missed the majority of pre-season and Allardyce insists the youngster will not be rushed into action.

He said: “Kalinic will probably play at Gillingham at the earliest. We will have a look at him and bring him on slowly.

“We created chances and we have got Franco who has settled in well. Over the marathon we hope we get better as time goes on.”