DION Charles has said he will play through the pain for Wanderers.

Speculation had been rife last week that Bolton’s top scorer could be out for an extended spell after damaging shoulder ligaments in the 2-1 defeat at Reading.

But he was patched up to play in Saturday’s 1-1 home draw with Peterborough United and Ian Evatt believes he will be OK to face Port Vale on Saturday.

“The positive news with Dion is that the structure of the shoulder, and the collar bone, is solid, there is no issue. It is just the little ligaments around it that have been damaged, so it becomes a pain management thing,” he said.

“He had it strapped up, had pain relief, had an injection prior to the game to help him get through it, and he wanted to do it for the team which is great credit to him.”

Wanderers went down to 10 men against Peterborough after Gethin Jones was shown a straight red card. Evatt said after the game that he wanted to see different angles of his defender’s challenge on Ricky Jade-Jones, but The Bolton News understands an appeal against his suspension is unlikely.

Evatt had to change his team shape in the second half moving to a flat back four with Charles playing wide on the right until he was swapped for Jon Dadi Bodvarsson in the 73rd minute.

Goal-scorer Victor Adeboyejo also worked hard on his own up front before Dan Nlundulu was brought on for the final 22 minutes – and Evatt was pleased that both substitutions breathed fresh life into the game.

“Both Dion and Vic were very disciplined with what they were doing for the team,” he said. “It isn’t ideal for either of those players but the two lads who came on really bought into it as well, they made a real statement which will push the others to get into the team.”

Wanderers had to sacrifice a lot of their attacking football in the second half to protect a point but cheered on by a vociferous support of more than 21,000, Evatt was pleased with the second half display.

“I think it would have been a really good game had it stayed 11 v1 1, their style was to hit fast in transition on counter attacks, get lots of crosses into the box and they are very aggressive from set plays,” he said. “We were trying to be more intricate, build our way through and find overloads against their full-backs, and we did that once or twice, getting the goal from it.

“I think it would have been a really good game, it was just spoiled by a few decisions.

“But I think a lot of credit goes to the players for the way they saw that game out.”