GEORGE Johnston wants to show Wanderers fans he hasn’t missed a beat after missing the whole of last season through injury.

The former Liverpool and Feyenoord defender is now fit again and keen to make up for lost time spent rehabbing his cruciate ligament after surgery.

Johnston had been one of Bolton’s leading lights up to the end of the 2022/23 campaign, which ended with a play-off semi-final defeat at Barnsley.

But now the 25-year-old is aiming to prove he can hit the same levels again, having returned to the training ground a fortnight early to ensure he was in the best possible shape for the build-up to the League One season.

“It would be easy for me to say I want to get back starting and playing week-in, week-out, but my ambitions are bigger than that,” he told The Bolton News. “I want to be the best player on the pitch.

“After what had happened with the game at Barnsley, I thought I’d had a really good season and I was ready to kick on, so I want to continue where I left off there. I want to be one of the main players in the team, one of the leaders, the stand-outs, one of the mainstays going for promotion.”

Johnston was injured in the first pre-season game at Bamber Bridge last summer and though he did return to training and travel with the squad for several weeks at the end of last season, it was decided that he should build towards this July to make a full comeback.

He played 45 minutes in last weekend’s behind-closed-doors game at St George’s Park and is now itching to get going again on Saturday, as Wanderers travel to Bishop Auckland to face Middlesbrough.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “At half time in the West Brom game I wanted to play 90 minutes and stay on but everyone else was like ‘no, it’s your first game back.’ “Even though it was a friendly, the buzz I had for that game I could have played 90 and extra time.

“I didn’t feel off the pace, physically, and it was just really good to get out there. I want every game now, Saturday-Tuesday, until the season starts.

“You don’t realise how much you miss it until you step back out there again. You don’t really have the competitiveness of a game, you can’t replicate it, and that is what I enjoy.”

Johnston had to watch Wanderers miss out on their target last season, admitting the Wembley defeat against Oxford United was “difficult to watch” from the stands.

Many have speculated on how that result will impact Ian Evatt and his squad this time around but the defender insists the signs have been positive.

“I don’t think I have come back to pre-season and seen a group more determined than this one are right now,” he said. “The intensity we have been training at has been through the roof. If we can replicate parts of that through the season we will be there or thereabouts again.

“Obviously the aim this season is to go one step further, make things happen. If we carry on the way we have for the first few weeks of pre-season then it will put us in really good stead.”