After a first league win of the season, Bolton turn their attention back to the EFL Trophy tomorrow as they face a trip to Shrewsbury.
Wanderers lost their opening match of the group stage at home to Crewe last month, and once again face League One opposition. A defeat, be it in 90 minutes or via penalties, would see us unable to progress with a game still to play. Any sort of win would keep us alive, but we’d need to win by a couple of goals to go above the Shrews and into second place.
It might be worth noting, as it even got past me until now, that this match is a 5.30pm kick-off.
🗣️ '𝙒𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙬𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙪𝙢 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚.' 💬
🎥 Speaking last Saturday, Ian Evatt discussed Wanderers' trip to @shrewsweb in the @EFL_Trophy_ tomorrow evening.#BWFC 🐘🏰 pic.twitter.com/vpVjUy4Ike
— Bolton Wanderers (@OfficialBWFC) October 5, 2020
Team news
Adam Senior and Ronan Darcy are expected to be handed starts as reward for their recent efforts in training. Some changes will be made from Saturday’s win but competition rules forbid too many. Gethin Jones, Shaun Miller, Lloyd Isgrove, Reiss Greenidge and Alex Baptiste are all unavailable.
Previously…
Bolton’s last trip to the New Meadow was in March 2017, when second half goals from Mark Beevers and Adam Le Fondre gave us a 2-0 win. We never got to travel to Shropshire last season, we drew 1-1 with them at home, the away game was rescheduled to April but then coronavirus happened.
The opposition
Shrewsbury won their opening game of this competition against Newcastle’s U21s, but their League One campaign has started slowly, with three draws and a defeat from their four matches. Ex Bolton full back Sam Ricketts is still in charge, having took over mid-way through the 2018-19 season. Josh Vela is also there these days, after joining at the start of the year after a short and unsuccessful stint in Scotland with Hibs.
Prediction
A tricky one, as it depends on the lineups that are picked. I’ll go for a 2-1 loss, at the end of the day we are playing a team from a higher division. But anything could happen tomorrow.