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Wanderers will send Kieran Lee for a scan to assess damage to his Achilles Heel sustained in Saturday’s 3-2 win at Oxford United.
The midfielder hobbled off halfway through the first half, and though Ian Evatt confirmed after the game that the injury was not a serious one, Lee will be sent for checks and will not be in the squad for Burton on Tuesday night.
“He has got a heel issue that we have been managing for a while now,” the manager explained. “He has got a growth and a spur that needs shaving and obviously with him managing that pain load, it has kind of changed his running gait and gait pattern and in turn, probably caused some Achilles damage or tendinopathy, so we will have to look at it and manage it.
“I think it’ll be enough to keep him out of Tuesday but we don’t know the severity yet.
“We will debrief tomorrow and Matt (Barrass) will chance to have a good look at him and no doubt send him to our favourite scanner and we will see what we get from that. But for now, he just needs to rest, recover and see how it settles.” Amadou Bakayoko produced the winning goal at the Kassam Stadium – his third in his last four outings – to bring Wanderers to within eight points of the play-off places.
Evatt is delighted to see the former Coventry City man firing like he did at the start of the season after a bad run of injuries.
“He is a big player for us but we haven’t been able to get a clear run with him,” he said. “We had so many injuries in the first half of the season that he was limited to what he could do.
“Now he is showing he is a proper number nine and with the run of games he is getting that he can have a real impact on the team.
“But we have got so many players that can do that now. After the early substitution with Kieran having a bit of an Achilles problem, we were always one sub light because I’m looking at my bench and I want to get Sads (Kieran Sadlier) on as well.
“It is just exciting and I think we have built a really good group and a really strong group. There is lots of work to come and this team is still a work in progress, it is still only a few weeks old. There are lots of positives, lots of things to work on, but for now we’ll enjoy today and get focused pretty quickly on Burton on Tuesday.”
Inevitably, attention was also focussed on Marlon Fossey, the flying wing-back who scored Bolton’s second goal on the day and then created the winner for Bakayoko.
His spectacular celebrations had the Bolton fans singing his name – but Evatt took a slightly different view.
“He came in and said he had a bit of a tight groin at half time, and I said maybe he wants to stop doing the Triple Salchow then,” he joked.
“He’s a really talented player. We are lucky to have him, we are enjoying working with him and vice versa.
“As I have said before, there was always one eye on the future with bringing him in. We have to whisper that quietly because he is a very talented boy.”
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