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Wanderers are racing to find a new club for Ali Crawford and Brandon Comley in order to complete their own double deal by deadline day.
Ian Evatt is keen to offload the pair, who have not featured for the first team this season and may even be forced to leave them unregistered for League One football in order to bring in new blood.
Port Vale come to the UniBol on Tuesday night, a game which clashes with the close of the window, so the Bolton boss is pushing to get deals lined-up this weekend.
Evatt is working off a shortlist of names he drew up in the summer with technical performance director Chris Markham, and also has the option of pursuing loan deals from category one academy clubs, which would not count against the EFL squad quota.
Though Evatt is confident of bringing in at least one new signing to bolster his attack, he is reluctant to risk busting his budget and so wants to fix up clubs for Crawford and Comley to help balance the books.
“It isn’t all down to finance,” he said. “It’s more down to me wanting this group and this club and this team, as well as the owner, to be sustainable. We don’t want to over-spend, we don’t want to live beyond our means.
“We’ve got a sensible budget, it’s a competitive budget, and we’ll stick to it and if that means one in, one out, then we’ll do the best we can to let someone go and get some games and bring someone in who we feel can compete better with our first team players - that’s the reality of football.”
Wanderers will have to bide by EFL rules which state League One clubs can have 22 registered players, excluding goalkeepers and players born after January 1, 2000.
Even still, Evatt would have the option of excluding Crawford and Comley from the squad submitted to the league on Wednesday in the worst case scenario.
“We can leave players out of the squad and not register them, so it’s not necessarily a case of balancing numbers,” he said.
“I have responsibility as the manager of this football club to keep it sustainable and not overspend and live within our means. That’s what I will do. I will never ever put this club under any sort of pressure in terms of overspending and recruiting more than we should and spending more on players than we actually should.
“This is about the bigger picture for Bolton and I want to be part of that bigger picture and it requires me to be responsible in our recruitment and make sure we do our due diligence to live within our means.” Wanderers are unlikely to allow players out on loan before the deadline, says Evatt, although the option will still be available after Tuesday.
“The young ones aren’t governed by a transfer window, so the non-league players then can leave if the right option comes up outside of the window,” he said. “It’s more the senior ones that need first team football that have to be moved on by the Tuesday, so young ones aren’t an immediate concern at the moment for them.
“For us it’s about the ones that aren’t playing and can we get them some regular football and then can we strengthen our group with one or two more.”
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