WANDERERS have run into a few injury troubles on the eve of their game at Cambridge United.
Ian Evatt was reticent to name names – but the Bolton boss admitted there may be a few absences that he has to address after the final whistle at the Abbey Stadium, where Bolton go in search of their first league win since 1985.
George Thomason will be back from suspension, having missed the last League One outings against Carlisle United and Barnsley, and Gethin Jones is back available having returned from international duty with Australia in Qatar and trained for the first time on Monday morning.
Evatt has issues elsewhere, however, which will be checked and monitored on the day of the game.
“Gethin is available but obviously he did a fair bit of travelling over the weekend – 16 or 17 hours – so we will have a look at how he is over the next 24 hours or so,” the manager said. “He has trained today, and it is great to have him back.
“There are one or two complications that we are still investigating from Saturday. These things all seem to come at once and we are having one of those spells at the moment but we have a good squad of players and we will utilise who we need to utilise.
“There are one or two things that we are investigating over the next day or so but post-game I have no doubt we can have another conversation.”
Wanderers play Tuesday-Saturday for the next two weeks now, a run that will also begin to level out some of the games in hand they currently have on their promotion rivals.
“It is going to be a busy period and we have 18 games left now to try and achieve our goal,” Evatt said. “It is still very much in our own hands, which is what we would have asked for at the start of the season.
“There are going to be highs and lows, differences in performances and results, but we need to take care of our own business and stay as consistent as we possibly can do. We know what is required and it is down to us to execute it.”
Saturday’s draw against Barnsley, one of the teams in that promotion fight, received mixed reviews around the fanbase over the past few days.
Evatt felt after rewatching the game that his side had been their own worst enemy at times.
He said: “I didn’t think we played badly on Saturday at all. They had the better chances but they were self-inflicted, individual errors, not them cutting us open.
“Mistakes happen but we didn’t concede that second gaol.
“We had given ourselves a mountain to climb and we have had that discussion this morning, in those big games you just can’t afford to concede the first goal, especially from a set play.
“We did the same and gave ourselves an uphill struggle. We managed to overcome that on Saturday and get back into the game but we need to cut out those errors.
“We had opportunities from our own set plays as well that we probably should have taken.
“We had the majority of control, other than 15 minutes after half time, and that was self-inflicted.
“We will do our best now to regroup and put on our best performance at Cambridge.”
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