Vital Preview: Blackburn Rovers v Cardiff

Cardiff’s first game back in the Championship comes at Ewood Park against Blackburn Rovers on Friday.

We’ll be looking to start the season well but Blackburn would be a club expecting to be challenging for promotion into the Premier League like ourselves so this live game shown on Sky Sports will be an interesting early season meeting.

Ben Marshall and our former striker Rudy Gestede, who signed for Blackburn permanently in January after a loan last season, are available after bugs so should give them a fully fit squad to select from with summer signings Chris Brown and Alex Baptiste in for debuts.

We’re without suspended Juan Cala and the injured Ben Turner injured so with us limited defensively Matt Connolly will partner Mark Hudson in central defence after the club captain recovered from injury that ruined most of the last season.

Tom Adeyemi was signed in time to make his debut with him unlikely to be the only one of OGS summer arrivals that does so but injury to Craig Noone rules him out.

Blackburn ended the last Championship season without a defeat in a dozen games but we’ve won the last three meetings including a 4-1 win at Ewood Park in the last meeting at Blackburn in our promotion winning season as we completed the double over them.

I’ll be happy if we can start this season with a win.