AARON Collins has given Wanderers a big boost ahead of their Vertu Trophy quarter final at Wrexham.
The Welshman, who is this season’s leading scorer in the competition, did train on Monday morning with the rest of the squad having missed Saturday’s 4-3 win against Crawley with a bruised hip.
Cardiff loanee Kion Etete was undergoing a scan on a thigh injury as Steven Schumacher spoke to the local press ahead of the Wrexham game but the Bolton head coach admitted it was “nearly 100 per cent” that he would not feature.
“We will probably have Aaron Collins available,” he added. “He trained with us today and the injury has settled down. It was a bang on his hip, so he did part of the session this morning, so that's a bonus and a positive for us.”
Wanderers can play George Thomason, as his two-game ban does not apply to the Trophy, but they will have Aaron Morley, Joel Randall and Alex Murphy cup-tied and Szabi Schon suspended because of two bookings in the previous rounds.
Schumacher has hinted that he could call-up some of the younger players in the B Team to swell his numbers.
“It’s one of those things, when you get situations like this it’s an opportunity for someone else,” he said. “It will bring some freshness to the team in what was a game on Saturday that felt like it was about three hours long.
“It was be a chance to get some of the younger lads in from the academy, to give them some game time.
“It has been a bit of a juggling act this morning, but we will be fine. We will have a really good team to go there and hopefully try and get a good result.”
After watching Saturday’s seven goal thriller back, Schumacher felt slightly more positive about the first-half display than he had at the weekend.
“We watched the game back yesterday, all the coaches watched it in our own time and came back with each other late last night for a group chat, and we all thought we’d actually played really well.
“I was frustrated a little bit at half time. I felt that we had got into some brilliant areas and just didn't make the final pass, so I was a little bit frustrated with the players and asked them to tidy up a little bit.
“When I watched it back, which is quite often the case, it's never as good as you think it was and it's never as bad as you thought it was either. it was somewhere in the middle.
“We got into some brilliant areas and, as I say, we were just missing the goal.
“Then, the second half was excellent from an attacking point of view.
“Their goals came from a little bit of fortune for a couple of them, and then there were things we could have done better, along with some very good finishing.
“It was a really entertaining game and I enjoyed watching it back.”
