Rovers are into the final stages of a tendering process that will see a full renovation of the club’s Ewood Park pitch, and also a replacement of the undersoil heating.

Chief executive Steve Waggott will this week meet with companies in a bid to finalise a deal that will allow works to take place this summer, if financing can be agreed.

The cost of the renovations is expected to be in the region of £2m and would be the first full renovation of the playing surface in almost 30 years.

Waggott says the new surface would be ‘a stich pitch’ in which artificial grass is incorporated into natural grass.

“If I can get the finance arranged, I'd like to do it this summer,” the club’s chief executive said.

“I've been pushing behind the scenes with it and we've gone through a tendering process, we've got the quotes in and I'm going to see two, stroke three of the quotes with the companies that we think will be able to give us a great service.

“We're pushing ahead so I'm going to try and get that in place for next season, if I can finance the project.

“If not, then at least we'll have time from the end of this season, May 8 is the last game so then we will be able to do a full refurbishment of the top layers and take it all off like we normally do, which will put it in a much better condition than this year.

“But my preferred option is to have a modern stitched-pitch. It doesn't guarantee you a green carpet…but it gives you unbelievable stability where players can trust the surface.”

With Rovers’ final game of last season coming on July 18, with the first of this campaign coming just six weeks later, that didn’t afford Rovers the chance to replace the top layer of the surface in time for the Carabao Cup tie with Doncaster Rovers on August 29.

The Rovers pitch has come in for criticism, Coventry City boss Mark Robins describing the surface as 'a pudding of a pitch' at the weekend, and next month Rovers face a run of three home games within the space of a week, with still eight Ewood fixtures to play.

“In a normal year, unlike last year where we had four weeks to turn things around between the 2019/20 and this season, we couldn't grow grass in four weeks so we couldn't take the entire top off, re-seed and let it grow and germinate over eight to 10 weeks,” Waggott explained.

“So it had to be a scarifying process to try and encourage growth but we were back on it in the space of four weeks. I look at other pitches and see clips of games from other clubs and we're not the only grass pitch suffering and there are many chief executives at other clubs struggling with their grass pitches.

“If we put in a complete new installation, that's from top to bottom, from the gravel pit to undersoil heating to new laying of the pitch etc with a new boiler, water storage is important and it's all got to be an eco-friendly basis. It's about £2m for a new pitch at Ewood.”

Waggott said the new pitch works could be funded by owners Venky’s, or the costs spread over a period.

He explained: “I'm looking at various options but obviously the backstop could be the owners if needs be. I'm trying to try and not put more and more pressure or grow fond of requests, which has been more and more this season.”