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Wanderers boss Ian Evatt reckons the offside rule needs to be reviewed following his side’s 1-1 draw with Portsmouth.
Aiden O’Brien put the visitors in front early in the second half, slotting home from close range after getting on the end of Marcus Harness’ cut-back.
A Portsmouth attacker was in an offside position in the build-up but didn’t touch the ball, which led referee Marc Edwards to award the goal.
Evatt insists that players in an offside position still have an impact on defenders and feels the current rules need tweaking.
“I completely understand what the officials are saying because the rules are the rules, but the rules are wrong,” he told The Bolton News.
“I was a defender and you’re aware of people in offside positions. It affects your decision and even if they don’t make a play at the ball, you know they’re there and you’re stretching or rushing or making a bad decision to try and prevent them from getting the ball.
“That’s exactly what happened. The player in the offside position has affected our players’ decision. It ends up being a poor clearance and it ends up being a goal so we do have to look at that.
“If they do have an impact, they don’t have to have an impact by necessarily touching the ball or physically going for the ball.
“But if they’re stood in the vicinity of a player and can affect their decision then for me they’re offside and probably something we need to look at with the rules.
“I think it has happened a few times. I’ve seen it on the TV quite a lot and it does impact you, especially as defenders because it is a natural thing to clear a ball when someone is in and around you.”
Elias Kachunga won a penalty, which Kieran Sadlier would tuck away, shortly after coming off the bench.
MJ Williams also impressed after coming on, and Evatt was pleased with their impact in the second half.
He added: “I thought MJ did great when he came on. I thought he gave us some energy and some power in the middle of the pitch, some physicality.
“Elias was full of energy, good forward run to get the penalty and we were wanting to bring Baka (Amadou Bakayoko) on as well to make a difference for us, but we’d already burnt our subs because of the injuries so there is a lot that happened.
“There is lots to look at and lots to debrief on but the main thing is when you don’t play well, you don’t lose and we didn’t lose tonight.”
Ricardo Santos, Dapo Afolayan and Kyle Dempsey were all taken off against Pompey due to hamstring injuries.
The Bolton chief admits it would be a blow to lose them for their upcoming matches and is hoping for positive news later in the week.
“Rico is a huge player for us so we hope that’s not too bad, and likewise with Dapo and Kyle so we don’t know right now how bad it is,” he said.
“Declan (John) was cramping up as well towards the end so we’ll do our due diligence, get them scanned and see where we’re at later on in the week.”
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