After a positive, yet ultimately disappointing 2021/22 Championship season, Blackburn Rovers are now set for their 10th consecutive season in the Football League after finishing 8th under Tony Mowbray.
As it stands, Blackburn Rovers will be entering into the 2022/23 campaign with no new manager yet appointed, following the expiration of manager Mowbray’s contract after five years in the Ewood Park dugout.
Key players such as Ryan Nyambe, Joe Rothwell, and club captain Darragh Lenihan are all out of contract this summer too.
This wave of departures based on contracts will continue on into the beginning of the 2023/24 season – with four players now entering the final 12 months of their deals.
According to Transfermarkt, the four players entering the final year of their contract are defender Daniel Ayala, midfielders Bradley Dack and Lewis Travis, and forward Ben Brereton Diaz.
The loss of 31-year-old Ayala would be devastating.
At this moment in time, he makes up one of only two senior centre-backs available to Blackburn Rovers going into next season. Despite this though, centre back will likely be the first area strengthened under the new regime and Ayala is again likely to be resigned to the bench, where he spent a majority of his availability last season, unable to dislodge the partnerships of Scott Wharton, Jan Paul van Hecke and Lenihan.
His advancing age and proneness to injury could make it unlikely that Ayala will be offered an extension at the end of next season.
Star playmaker Dack has been one of Blackburn Rovers’ most popular, if not the most popular player since his arrival in East Lancashire from Gillingham in 2017. Since then, the 27-year-old attacking midfielder became pivotal in the club’s promotion back to the Championship, playing 42 and scoring 18 goals and has since made 89 Championship appearances, and scored 28 goals for Blackburn Rovers.
Over the last couple of seasons, Dack has suffered two horrific ACL injuries, sidelining him for the best part of nearly three seasons. Dack recently returned to senior team duties at the end of the 2021/22 season, and while not back to his peak and struggling to complete 90 minutes, he is still proving an important part of the Blackburn Rovers team.
Dack has an option to extend for a year, providing some assurance for both parties on his future. Blackburn Rovers will be hoping Dack can remain fit and provide the output that has been so essential to the club for last few seasons.
As for Travis, he arrived at Ewood Park in 2015 from Liverpool’s youth team at the age of 18. Now 24, Travis has made 154 senior team appearances and scored four goals for the Blue and White army.
The metronome in Blackburn Rovers’ midfield, Travis has an option to extend his contract for another year. With many fans earmarking him as a potential future club captain, you would think Rovers will look to stretch his stay by a few more years.
Finally, the Stoke-born Chilean talisman Brereton Diaz’s deal was coming to an end until Blackburn Rovers triggered the one-year extension in his contract.
This will now take the sought-after 23-year-old’s time in Lancashire to the end of the 2022/23 season. Although initially struggling to perform after arriving from Nottingham Forest permanently in 2019, Brereton Diaz saw his stock rise after improved form at the tail-end of the 2020/21 season saw him called up to the Copa America with Chile.
In the season just concluded, Brereton Diaz scored 22 goals as Rovers missed out on the play-off places. Now the key player, and going into the last year of his contract, Blackburn Rovers will now be caught between accepting lucrative transfer offer or hoping for him to extend onwards from 2023.
