Blackburn Rovers players to get to work in extended pre-season

The players will report back on June 20 giving Jon Dahl Tomasson and his coaching staff six-and-a-half weeks to work with them heading into the 2023/24 campaign.  

It means the players will have had 43 days off since the end of the 2022/23 season which finished with the final day thriller at Millwall on May 8 when they missed out on the play-offs by goal difference.

Rovers had drawn up different plans for their return, dependant on when the season finished given their play-off chances, but a failure to finish in the top six means the whole squad, including Academy prospects, will be back at Brockhall on June 20.

Unlike previous seasons, the first two weeks of pre-season will take place at the Senior Training Centre, rather than a training camp away from Brockhall, with the first friendly to come on July 8 at Accrington Stanley.

It is then when the squad will travel overseas for a week-long training camp which is set to include two friendlies.

Rovers have so far confirmed just the Stanley friendly, but at least four more are scheduled, including what has been described as a ‘marquee’ game on the weekend before the new season gets under way.

It was a mid-June start for the squad last season when reporting for pre-season testing, albeit in smaller groups, when the club was then without a head coach following the departure of Tony Mowbray.

That was soon rectified with the appointment of Jon Dahl Tomasson, but it wasn’t until a week later, on June 23, that the Dane was able to take training for the first time after receiving his work permit.

The squad then headed to Portugal on June 25, before a secondary training camp in Scotland in mid-July which included games against Dundee and Celtic.

Last season began on July 29, which meant the pre-season games were wrapped up the previous week.

Tomasson stated last summer he would have done things differently with the schedule had he been in place earlier.

He has had that opportunity now, with his focus being on matches being played on back-to-back days so to mix up his squad, and manage workloads and schedules better.

Last summer saw Rovers often split their squads, with some playing in midweek and the others in the weekend fixtures, though back-to-back matches won’t affect training time in the same way.

The Stanley friendly will again be made up of two 60 matches, mirroring last summer which was Tomasson’s first match in charge.

Given Tomasson’s eye for detail, and emphasis on players’ workloads, the extended pre-season will give the players every opportunity to get up to speed for the season opener on August 5, a week later than in 2022 when the schedule was changed to accommodate the mid-season World Cup break.

There will be just one training camp away from Brockhall this summer, but it won’t be a return to Portugal, Scotland or Spain, where the squad have spent time in recent years.