Blackburn Rovers transfer latest and situation they ‘wanted to avoid’<\/a><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n “Todd Cantwell is back. He made the game in midweek, went through the process this week and now ready for tomorrow,” Ismael revealed.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Hayden Carter trained with the squad again, so that’s two days now. For sure too early for the game this weekend because he was missing the pre-season.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n “He needs a few more weeks, but at least he’s back with the squad. Otherwise, the two other guys with Adam Forshaw and Jake Garrett, it’s obvious that they’re still injured.”\n<\/p>\n
\n “He can be a technical leader on the pitch. He’s got all the potential to do that,” he added on Cantwell.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Now it’s all about his fitness and to stay healthy. I think he made a great pre-season. He just got a little setback last week, but now he’s back.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n “Hopefully, he can stay healthy and touch wood, it might be a big season for him. He’s very motivated to do that.”\n<\/p>\n
\n With Lewis Travis unlikely to be involved, Sidnei Tavares could make his first league start. After an ankle injury in pre-season, he is ready to stand-in for the captain if called upon\n<\/p>\n
\n Ismael was encouraged by his first showing in midweek but, equally, stressed the need for patience with the new arrivals.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It was encouraging, we know what we signed as a player,” Ismael said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I’ve got the final product in my mind. How it looks like with these players. We know how we train, but Sidney is the same, it will take time.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He got injured on day one in the pre-season, he missed four weeks. He just came back at the very end.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He needs time as well to find his rhythm. He needs game rhythm. This is what we expected from him.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Hopefully, he can stay healthy. Now, it’s only the consistency that will help the player to reach his full potential.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Birmingham have made a fast start to the season after their promotion from League One. An impressive opening day draw with Ipswich Town was followed up by beating Sheffield United.\n<\/p>\n
\n “They have what everyone wants, they’re on an upwards charge,” Ismael said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “At some point, everyone will have momentum. It’s about the timing of that.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It’s a team that got promoted with a big ambition. We saw clearly on the transfer market but we’re playing at home. We know that every game is tough.\n<\/p>\n
\n “You have to earn your points. We are ready for the game and to make sure that we can get the three points I think that we know exactly what we have to do.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n “They have just got promoted but, in reality, they’ve got a strong squad. They spend a lot of money on the market, clearly. It’s a great game for us and we are prepared.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The midfielder missed the opening day defeat at West Brom but played the final 30 minutes of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-347340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115034539236105562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}