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Victor Adeboyejo is poised for a dramatic comeback from injury against his former club Barnsley in the play-off semi-final tomorrow night.
The 10-goal striker has not featured since March 9 but has carefully stepped up his recovery from a hamstring tear to time his return perfectly for the televised clash at Oakwell.
Adeboyejo scored in his last trip to Barnsley – a thrilling 2-2 draw which also saw Randell Williams grab a 98th minute equaliser – and Ian Evatt says he will be in his thoughts for the squad looking to avenge last season’s defeat at the same stage.
“We have played the long game with Victor, really, and he has been itching for a couple of weeks now, but we wanted to limit the risk as best we could,” he said.
“It was always the plan to get him back for this game, should it get that far. It has and it is brilliant to have him back in the group because he is a good influence on the group and a big part of what we do. It was important to get him back fit for this game.”
Barring the long-term injuries of Carlos Mendes Gomes and Jon Dadi Bodvarsson – whose wife was due to give birth as Evatt spoke to the local press yesterday – Wanderers have a full squad ready to take on Barnsley.
Evatt has not had that luxury since the turn of the year but grinned as he said mentioning the fact would be picked up by his critics as “making excuses”.
Regardless of what has gone before, the Bolton boss is pleased that preparations for the semi-final have not been hampered by too much unavailability, a factor which he feels has increased the quality of training in the last few days.
“It makes a massive difference,” he said. “It has been bad since January, a real challenge, we have had to rely on the Under-18s and the B Team an awful lot to even put on training sessions that we feel are right for the players.
“When you play Saturday-Tuesday it is impossible to really get the detailed work into them because the limited bodies we had, it was literally a case of play, recover, play, recover.
“I think our best performances come off time on the grass and this week we have had that time with a full squad of players, which makes training extremely competitive.
“The ones who are not in the 11 have done incredibly well this week to help get us ready and prepared. They will, in turn, be ready if they are called on from the bench or in whatever is to come for us.
“As a coach, it is really important to have a group of players who are hungry, but also fit and available, so we can produce the details in a training session that we think we’ll face on Friday.
“Having that this week has been a huge positive for us.”
Evatt says his players are in a positive frame of mind too, just under a week after their season-long chase for automatic promotion was ended at Peterborough.
“The time for evaluation – myself, or what has gone right or wrong this season isn’t now, the time is for focus,” he added. “What has gone before doesn’t matter for the time being. All that matters is preparing for Barnsley.”
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