Greg Cunningham is set to return to parent club Cardiff City which Tony Mowbray admits could free up funds for potential new signings.

Cunningham will see his season-long loan deal cut short having sustained a cruciate knee ligament injury in October that will rule him out for the remainder of the campaign.

Rovers were happy for the Republic of Ireland international to undergo his rehabilitation at Brockhall, but have exercised their option to cut short the loan spell.

Boss Tony Mowbray admits it is a ‘business decision’, with Cunningham likely to have been recalled by the Bluebirds this month anyway had he been fit.

The 28-year-old impressed in his 10 appearances, and Rovers could look at the possibility of a permanent move for Cunningham once he returns to full fitness, with 18 months left on his Cardiff contract. 

“I think that’s a business situation, I would suggest. We all like Greg, he’s good around the building, all the players really bought in to his personality and character,” Mowbray told the Lancashire Telegraph.

“But he’s not our footballer, he’s their footballer for the next 18 months.

“He’ll be going back to get his rehabilitation done back at his parent club and I think that will be done soon.

“We had a send back option as well, it works both ways generally.

“I think it’s a business decision, when the terminology of contract is there and they can recall, and you can send back, we either sit here and pay X amount of money on a salary of a player that can’t play for us, or we send him back to his parent club.

“That excess money can then be spent on a new signing coming in, the money that would have been spent on Greg sitting in a treatment room for the next six months.

“The contract states that he can be sent back in this window.”