MARTIN Olsson will not travel to Portugal for Blackburn Rovers’ pre-season training camp today – with Gary Bowyer saying the club will have to ‘see what happens’ this week over interest in the Swede.
Olsson’s agent Hasan Cetinkaya has again confirmed that a number of clubs want to sign the 25-year-old with Norwich City, Russian side Kuban Krasnodar and Turkish giants Galatasaray all in the running.
Olsson held face to face talks with Bowyer on Friday on his first day back at Brockhall for pre-season, having been given extra time off following a knee injury at the end of last season and a spell training with the Swedish national team.
He did not feature in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Wrexham in their opening pre-season friendly and Bowyer revealed he will not fly with the Rovers squad to the Algarve today for a week-long training camp.
"Martin only came back in on Friday so he’ll stay back in England and get his fitness levels up," Bowyer said.
"We’ll see what happens over the week. If nothing happens then we’ll be coming back and he’ll be joining in.
"He came in on Friday and we had a really good chat about things. At the moment there is nothing else to report.
"His main thought was about just getting fit. He commented on the feelgood factor around the training ground, he noticed that straightaway.
"He’s just got to knuckle down and crack on with his fitness."
One player who will be travelling to Portugal is centre back Yann Songo’o, who is on trial with Rovers and played 45 minutes at Wrexham.
The 21-year-old a free agent after leaving MLS side Sporting Kansas City.
"Yann has only been with us a couple of days but I thought he was impressive in the first half," Bowyer said.
"He’s come from the MLS, someone has put us on to him and it’s a case of having a look at it.
"He’ll come to Portugal, we’ll have a closer look at him and see where we go from there."
Bowyer dismissed reports that Rovers had received an enquiry from Swansea about Jordan Rhodes, saying: "No, I think they’re going through the alphabet and they’ve reached S."
Rovers are hoping to tie up the signings of defender Matt Kilgallon and midfielder Alex Marrow imminently.
Richard Dunne is said to be in talks with QPR, with the Irish international’s wage demands an obstacle in Rovers’ attempts to sign him.
There have also been reports that Rovers are looking at the Scottish PFA’s player of the year Michael Higdon, who is a free agent after leaving Motherwell and previously worked with Rovers assistant manager Terry McPhillips at Crewe.
As well as the forward, Portugal under 20 international left back Kiko has been linked – as has Liverpool midfielder Jay Spearing.
"We get linked with everybody," Bowyer said.
"We do our business in private and in the proper channels. If other clubs choose to do it differently, that’s their decision.
"We just need to make sure we’re competitive in the market.
"We’ve got one or two other targets which we don’t need to disclose at this moment but hopefully we can have them by the end of next week."
And Bowyer was content with Saturday’s match at Wrexham.
"I thought first half we were not bad at times, and we had a couple of good chances," he said.
"In the second half I thought we were a lot better. I thought John O’Sullivan and Todd Kane were impressive.
"The main focus was fitness. It gives us a platform now to kick on when we go to Portugal."
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