After making a winning start to the post-Ian Evatt era, managerless Bolton Wanderers seek back-to-back League One victories for the first time in 2025 when Northampton Town visit the Toughsheet Community Stadium on Tuesday night.
The Trotters left Huddersfield Town's turf with a 1-0 success to their name at the weekend, while their visitors picked up a highly creditable point away to promotion-chasing Wycombe Wanderers.
Match preview
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While the search continues to find Evatt's successor, academy coach Julian Darby and his backroom team stepped up to the plate for Saturday's visit to Huddersfield, where the 'new manager bounce' was in full effect for the former Premier League mainstays.
A solitary Aaron Collins goal - his seventh of the League One campaign - was enough for the Trotters to end Huddersfield's 16-game League One unbeaten sequence and their own three-game winless run in the third division, the one that led to Evatt's dismissal after five memorable years at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.
Reigniting their promotion bid at the home of the Terriers, Bolton are just a single point off the playoff positions in ninth place in the League One table, although seventh-placed Leyton Orient and eighth-placed Reading - whom they are level on points with - both have games in hand.
Whether the hosts have a new head coach in place before kickoff on Tuesday remains to be seen, but the current task at hand for Darby will be to snap a dismal sequence of results at home, where Bolton have only taken four points from the last 15 on offer.
Three defeats from their last five league games at the Toughsheet Community Stadium is as many as Bolton had suffered in their 25 matches beforehand, and to make matters worse, only three teams have shipped more than the hosts' 21 goals conceded on home turf in League One.
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Continuing their commitment to low-scoring affairs under new manager Kevin Nolan - an ex-Bolton stalwart - Northampton Town nullified title-chasing Wycombe Wanderers at Adams Park, denying the Chairboys the opportunity to rise to the summit of the table.
While Nolan's men could not argue that their efforts deserved all three points, their dogged display certainly merited one, as they restricted Wycombe to just four shots on target and boasted a respectable 43% possession on enemy territory.
As creditable as that stalemate was, Northampton are still looking over their shoulder in 20th place in the table, although they still boast a healthy six-point buffer over Cambridge United, Burton Albion and Crawley Town, the latter of whom have two games in hand.
Nolan's men will therefore keep their heads above water no matter what transpires on Tuesday, but they remain the lowest scorers in the division with just 24 strikes, and their last 360 minutes of League One football have seen just two strikes at both ends.
Tuesday's visitors coincidentally did score twice when Bolton visited their base on October 1, but they shipped twice that amount in a 4-2 defeat and have now failed to win any of their last six league matches against the Trotters, last prevailing all the way back in 1989.
Team News
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Prior to their success over Huddersfield, Bolton were hit with a three-match suspension blow relating to Jay Matete, who was found guilty of violent conduct during their clash with Charlton Athletic earlier this month for an apparent stamping incident.
Matete will serve the second of that three-match ban on Tuesday, where Chris Forino and Kyle Dempsey should miss out again, while Eoin Toal and Ricardo Santos's availabilities remain up in the air.
Neither defender was fit to face Huddersfield last time out, although Toal - who has been nursing a serious hamstring problem since October - has been in full training over the past couple of weeks.
Speaking of rearguard injury concerns, Northampton's on-loan Manchester City centre-back Luke Mbete remains sidelined with a hamstring problem, and he is joined in the infirmary by left-back duo Patrick Brough (leg fracture) and Ali Koiki (muscle).
Salford City loanee Callum Morton is also nursing an unspecified problem and may miss out too, but new signing Terry Taylor - owned by Charlton Athletic - started and played the full 90 against Wycombe just a couple of days after his arrival.
Nolan waited until the 83rd minute to make a change on Saturday, and while most of the starters from the weekend should be retained, Tariqe Fosu will no doubt be eyeing a recall to the tip of the attack over Sam Hoskins.
Bolton Wanderers possible starting lineup:
Southwood; Forrester, Johnston, Jones; Dacres-Cogley, Thomason, Sheehan, Morley, Osei-Tutu; Collins, Adebojeyo
Northampton Town possible starting lineup:
Tzanev; McGowan, Eyoma, Willis; Odimayo, Shaw, Taylor, Pinnock; McGeehan; Fosu, Eaves
We say: Bolton Wanderers 2-0 Northampton Town
Northampton have gone nine games without registering multiple goals and have to go back to September for the last time they scored more than once in a League One away match, two harbingers of doom for their midweek trip to Bolton.
Nolan's men should not be torn to shreds defensively, but if a morale-boosted Bolton can find their way through - which they almost certainly will - we cannot envisage the goal-shy visitors responding.
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Ben Knapton
