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Ian Evatt says he thought long and hard about naming a team comprised entirely of youngsters in Saturday’s FA Cup first round tie at Walsall.
Wanderers crashed out of the competition with a 2-1 defeat, Jamie Jellis scoring a 91st minute goal for League One Walsall to see them through to the second round.
Evatt rested Ricardo Santos completely and had made five changes to the team which had won at Stevenage earlier in the week.
But speaking to The Bolton News, the Bolton boss admitted it crossed his mind to take ALL of his senior players out of the firing line in an effort to avoid any further injuries.
“Honestly, it did,” he told us. “What stopped me is that I thought our fans deserved to see us compete, deserved for us to give it our best shot.
“I have tried to almost sit on the fence in terms of making changes and resting key personnel and also going to win the game competitively against a side that is going really well in the league and have a really challenging way of playing. It would have been really tough on the kids and I don’t think they are ready for this.
“It was a tough draw and I know they are from the league below but if we had our squad available we would have looked a lot different, I am confident of that.”
Wanderers went out of the cup in the first round for the fourth time in five seasons under Evatt, whose side go to Stockport County at the weekend without eight first team players through injury.
The club have actively sought to rearrange postponed games as quickly as possible this season to avoid the backlog they suffered at the start of the calendar year – a factor many believe contributed to their loss of form, and failure to get promotion.
Evatt is convinced that the defeat at Walsall will not impact negatively on league form, which has improved significantly since mid-September to push the Whites into sixth spot.
“All is not lost,” he added. “We had that cup run last year, we had the tie against Arsenal, I think I can safely say we were not going to win the FA Cup.
“But what I will say is that there can’t be any excuses now about extra games, we can’t use that excuse in the second half of the season that we are tired, we are fatigued, we have played too many games. No, we’ll get the lads back and then it’s full steam ahead for the league campaign.”
Wanderers have a clear week before facing Stockport at Edgeley Park, and conclude for the international break with their final Bristol Street Motors Trophy match against Fleetwood next Tuesday.
Brushing off the disappointment of defeat at the Bescot Stadium, Evatt wants all focus on the trip to County.
“I’m delighted there is no midweek game, delighted there were no more injuries,” he said. “The fans were brilliant again and we apologise we haven’t won this game and progressed to the next round but I think we all know our focus has to be on the league and we have to continue to progress as we have done in the last six weeks in that competition.”
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