Bolton v Grimsby: Evatt To Face His Former Boss

After a first win of the season last weekend, Bolton will aim to open their account at home tomorrow as they host Grimsby Town.

Wanderers should hopefully be able to take heart from a good result and decent performance last week, and many of those players should also be nicely refreshed as all but one outfield player were taken out of the starting XI for Tuesday’s EFL Trophy defeat. Our opposition meanwhile have had a dreadful start to the season, which we’ll go into in a bit…

Team news

Gethin Jones and Tom White will both be missing after picking up what looked like serious injuries over the last couple of matches, but subsequent scans have meant that they may be back sooner than originally planned, although it will still be a number of weeks. Ian Evatt probably should stick with the back three that worked last weekend, but Alex Baptiste could yet come into the side. Jak Hickman, replacing Jones, will be an enforced change.

Previously…

Bolton last faced Grimsby just under three years ago, when we hosted them in the first round of the FA Cup. Liam Trotter’s 20th minute goal got us through that tie with a 1-0 victory. We would then beat Sheffield United before taking Crystal Palace back to Selhurst Park but losing a third round replay.

The opposition

Grimsby haven’t had a good start to the season. They’ve lost both their league games and sit bottom of the table, losing 4-0 and 1-0. Furthermore, they’ve just come out of a COVID-enforced break which means their thrashing at the hands of Salford on September 19th was their last fixture. Tough times for Ian Holloway then, who Evatt played for at Blackpool and credits for him moving into management.

Prediction

It’ll be a big setback if we don’t beat the bottom side in this division, that has spent a few weeks in isolation. Having said that, that doesn’t mean it’s an automatic easy game. 2-1 to Bolton.