CHRIS O’Grady could make a shock comeback against his former club Rochdale tomorrow.

The experienced striker dislocated his knee shortly after signing for Wanderers and has been out for several weeks.

David Flitcroft revealed yesterday, however, that O’Grady has made significant progress over the international break and could now come into their thinking for tomorrow’s home clash.

The 33-year-old front man enjoyed the most prolific spell of his career at Spotland, scoring 31 goals for the club in just under 100 appearances.

Now he could play a part against Dale as Keith Hill’s men look to break their duck with a first victory of the season.

“We have been able to get Chris out on the grass this week, which is great,” he told The Bolton News.

“He suffered a freak training ground accident – his knee dislocated – but he is an absolute workaholic and he came back a lot sooner than we thought.

“Chris will be in contention and around the squad, I’d expect.”

Tomorrow is likely to come too soon for Josh Earl or Connor Hall, who both made their return from injury in Monday night’s development squad game at the UniBol.

“Josh came back and is still on the grass doing extra sessions,” Flitcroft explained. “You go from a training phase to a kind of semi-injured phase where you do extra work in the afternoons, so that’s where he is at the moment.

“Connor Hall is back. We didn’t really want to give him 90 minutes on Monday night but Ronan (Darcy) had a foot problem that we’re looking into, which meant Connor had to play on when 70 minutes would have been better for him. We’ll see where he’s at.”

Flitcroft wants Wanderers to raise their game for a local derby as the club look to avoid a record 12th game without a home victory.

“Commitment should be a given for any Bolton Wanderers team pulling on a shirt and we’ve been up for it in every game barring maybe Rotherham, and nearly every training session,” he said. “We need to show our own fans we’re excited to compete against anyone.

“There’s a Keith Hill factor. It’s a club coming to us that were built on Keith’s template and they are a good team.”