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Ian Evatt says he had to rest key players at Burton Albion on Tuesday night to limit the risk of them picking up injuries.
The Wanderers boss made four changes to his team at the Pirelli Stadium from the one which had beaten Oxford United a few days earlier, with Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, Kieran Sadlier, Kyle Dempsey and Will Aimson replacing Dion Charles, Kieran Lee, Gethin Jones and Aaron Morley.
Evatt went with his ‘biggest’ team in an effort to combat the physical threat Burton had at set pieces but saw his plans go up in smoke as the home side rattled in three goals in quick succession.
“Picking teams is difficult,” he said. “We have had so many games this month and we still have three more. We are managing people’s workloads as best we can, but we can’t keep picking the same 11.
“If we break them down we’re in trouble.
“Tonight was just about being mentally and physically really more than anything else. We feel like we are a good technical team but it wasn’t a night for technical footballers. It was a night for doing your jobs, dealing with their set plays, and building momentum in the game and then hopefully we could have brought them on to win us the game.
“But we shot ourselves in the foot with seven minutes of not dealing with their set plays so we will look at it, dust ourselves down and go again Saturday.”
Evatt confirmed that Jones, who was not involved with the matchday squad, was always earmarked to miss the game.
“We were going to rest Gethin,” he said. “We are managing his workload as best we can.
“We decided to leave him out tonight, but he’ll be back for Saturday.”
Wanderers remain 10 points off the top six and in 10th position going into games against Wimbledon and Lincoln City at the UniBol.
Evatt agreed that the Burton result, which ended a seven-game unbeaten run for the Whites, shows that League One can be unpredictable.
“It absolutely is,” he said. “Does that make us a poor team or does that make undo all our good work? No, it doesn't, but it makes things a lot more difficult.
“Our margin for error was slim and it’s got even slimmer now so we have to make sure we win our next two home games and then rebuild some momentum again.”
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