Connect with us

Bolton Wanderers

Pre-season friendly marred by potentially serious injury to Bolton player

A pre-season friendly which took place earlier this morning has been left marred by a potentially serious injury to a key Bolton Wanderers player.

It was a pitch perfect start for the newly relegated Trotters who came away from Loughborough University with a 6-0 victory.

Manager Ian Evatt watched his side comfortably get four first-half goals from Ali Crawford, Antoni Sarcevic, George Taft and Nathan Delfouneso before Liam Gordon and Delfouneso went on to extend their lead in the second half.

However, as the game went into it’s final 15 minutes, things got scrappy as summed up by Bolton News, and in the end, each team were handed a yellow for reckless tackles.

Dennis Politic picked up a bad injury on the 80th minute after he closed down a defender, and was left in huge amounts of pain.

The Bolton youngster required oxygen and needed a number of minutes to be treated before being stretchered off.

He was taken back to the North West for further medical treatment.

“We’re looking at the clock and there are 10 minutes to go and we’ve scored 16 goals so far, conceded none, and things are looking really rosy. We hadn’t picked up any injuries, really, and then this happens,” he told The Bolton News.

“This game – life in general – does come to challenge us sometimes and it can be how you deal with that adversity.

“Dennis has got to stay positive now. It looks like he will be on the sidelines for a long spell but I said to the players in the dressing room that if one of us is hurt, we all have to hurt. We have to rally round him now and give him the support he needs.

“I hope, of course, that the injury is not as serious as it seemed initially – but the most important thing is to make sure he gets the help he needs.”

The friendly did become scrappy in its final quarter with a player from each side shown a yellow card for poor challenges.

Politic’s incident was not the result of a tackle, leaving Evatt fearing the worst.

“They are normally the worst ones, when there’s nobody in close proximity, and he had just gone to press the ball with the intensity we’re asking from him and that sort of thing can happen – a slight slip, and things can happen,” he said.

“In terms of the game, yes, there were a few niggly challenges towards the end. But I said to the players that we have to keep our discipline because when people react like that it normally means we’re winning.

“When you are keeping the ball and dominating for 90 minutes teams are going to get the hump. They are going to get nasty and try to do all they can to knock them off their own game.

“We need to maintain our belief and discipline to make sure we keep 11 on the pitch.”

It was in the 2019/20 League One season that the 20 year old broke into Bolton senior side last season. He scored five goals in 30 appearances, impressing in his first campaign as a first-team player with the club, which gave fans much anticipation on how good he could be in a division below.

After finding out that a pre-season friendly was marred by a potentially serious injury to a Bolton player, social media users took to send their thoughts to Politic…

Related Topics
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

More in Bolton Wanderers