JORDAN Rhodes will be recalled to the Blackburn Rovers starting line-up for tonight’s derby at home to Bolton Wanderers after Gary Bowyer ruled out sending the £8m striker out on loan.

Championship rivals Derby County, Norwich City, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough have all been linked with moves for Rhodes before the emergency loan window closes later this month.

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But Rovers boss Bowyer, who kept the 25-year-old on the bench for Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final draw at Liverpool, said: “I don’t understand why we’d want to consider loaning one of our players to rivals in the Championship when we know exactly Jordan does.

“I think it’s come out possibly because he wasn’t involved in the starting XI on Sunday but if you look at our game plan and how we went about it, we were never going to go to Anfield with two strikers.

“There’s been a lot said about going to Anfield as a Premiership team and playing two strikers and not get anything there so we certainly weren’t going to doing to do that.

“Jordan Rhodes plays on Wednesday against Bolton.

“We’ve got 11 league games left and an FA Cup quarter-final replay, with a visit to Wembley if we are successful, so why we would want to let players go at this stage is beyond me.”

It has been reported that Forest, who like Rovers are under a Financial Fair Play embargo, and Middlesbrough want to take Rhodes on loan and then pay a fee for his services if they are promoted to the Premier League.

Any offers for the Scotland international, who has scored 66 goals in 131 appearances at Ewood Park, would have to go to Venky’s.

Rovers’ owners turned down a £10m-plus bid for Rhodes from Hull City in August after awarding him a lucrative new five-year contract.

Rhodes remains on course to net 20 goals for the sixth season running after taking his tally for the term up to 13 in last Wednesday’s 2-1 win at Sheffield Wednesday.

But the poacher, who has also been linked with a summer switch to the Owls, is no longer a guaranteed starter.

“I think for any player who is not in the starting XI there is always frustration and disappointment and, to be perfectly honest, that’s exactly what I want,” said Bowyer, who confirmed Ipswich Town winger Paul Taylor is still training with the club.

“We’ve had chats but he’s starting against Bolton and we’re looking forward to him scoring like he did against Sheffield Wednesday.”

Tonight Rovers will be without on-loan Bolton duo Alex Baptiste and Jay Spearing, who are ineligible to face their parent club, as well as captain Grant Hanley, Shane Duffy, Jason Lowe, David Dunn and Josh King through injury.

Bowyer said: “We’re stretched in terms of number and we’re not as fortunate as Bolton in terms of the number of loans they have because of our embargo, but we’ll deal with it and have a right good go at it.”

Bowyer also confirmed that talks have started over new deals for players out of contract in the summer.

He said: “We’ve always talked about how many windows it will take to get the squad straight and how the next window coming is the most important. Well this window coming, because of the embargo, we need to be tying these players down quickly and we’ve already started conversations with the ones we want to keep.”