Bolton host rivals Blackburn Rovers this weekend as they look to record consecutive victories in the Barclays Premier League and move level on points with the men from Ewood Park.

Gary Megson held his customary pre-match press conference down at the Reebok Stadium on Thursday afternoon ahead of what is set to be a thrilling Lancashire derby...

Gary, I imagine all the players who have been away on international duty are starting to report back, how are they?
We've phoned them and we know what they've been doing after both games and in training and so far it's okay. The ones that aren't back yet, such as the longer travellers like Ricardo Gardner, we expect to report back fit.

Ebi Smolarek scored for Poland on Wednesday night. How close is he to the first team at the moment?
They are all close and there is no one you could suggest is out with the washing and has got no chance of playing. Ebi, Riga, Heidar and Vaz Te have to recognise that they have to fight for their place.

We brought Ebi in and he needs a little bit of time to settle down, but he played against Arsenal for the first hour and did well, so he's in consideration all the time. But he has to get past some decent players to get into the team.

You haven't seen half of your squad for the best part of a fortnight, so how has that affected preparation?
It does alter things a little bit, because you can't get yourself into that methodical way where you know what you're doing week in week out.

You've got these international breaks coming up, but they are part of football now, and you have to cope with that.

I read the other day (Aston Villa boss) Martin O'Neill came up with an idea that you could play them the day before. If they played internationals on a Tuesday it would help the clubs, who in the end are paying the players' wages, because we'd get them back a day earlier. I hope that might come in at some stage.

What are you expecting from Blackburn?
Like always, it's going to be a tough game and they have some excellent players. They have made a decent start to the season, they have got a new manager who's doing well and Archie's there who's going to want to come back here and get a good result.

It's a tough game for us but we do go into it on the back of probably our best result of the season so far.

After the last international break, we disappointed against Fulham. I imagine you are keen to avoid another similar performance against Blackburn
We've got to make sure that doesn't happen again though there isn't one thing you can do to avoid a repeat.

There certainly wasn't a thread that you could have said was the reason for why we played so poorly. Kevin Davies didn't go away on international duty and he was our best player.

Ricardo Gardner and Jussi Jaaskelainen did and they were both up there with him. It was just a real bad day. Blackburn is a big match for us because we've got the momentum of winning our first away match at West Ham.

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