WANDERERS come face-to-face with former terrace hero Gary Madine at Blackpool tonight - looking to prevent him scoring his first home goal for his new club.

The 29-year-old hit 10 goals in the promotion campaign of 2016/17 and reached double figures again the following season before making a £6million move to Cardiff City in early 2018.

Since leaving Bolton Madine helped the Bluebirds into the Premier League and played a handful of games in the top flight - also enjoying promotion with Chris Wilder's Sheffield United in a loan spell.

Madine has scored twice for the Tangerines, at Bristol Rovers and Oxford United, but is yet to find the back of the net at Bloomfield Road.

In total, the target man scored 26 times in 109 appearances after signing on a free transfer from Sheffield Wednesday.

He is also well known to Keith Hill, who worked with him for a short spell at Rochdale at the start of his career.

“I loved working with Gary,” he told The Bolton News. “We got him from Carlisle and saw huge potential at that stage.

“He has been on a journey – been up, down, and through the course of his career had some really good moves.

“He is a very good football player but you can see potential in players, it’s how you harness and develop it, can you encourage it to perform on a regular basis."

Wanderers have no fresh injury concerns ahead of the game but Hill has confirmed that he will be offering more chances to the players who are contracted beyond this season in the foreseeable future.

The likes of Joe Bunney, Ryan Delaney, Harry Brockbank, Liam Edwards, and Muhammadu Faal are all signed on to play next season - and the Bolton boss says he is keen to give opportunities.

“There will be chances," he said. "It will change as a consequence of the situation we’re in.

“By nature I think players will grow and if they don’t then they find it hard to catch up.

“There will be opportunities, I am quite sure of that, as the season progresses. I am going to encourage it and to a certain degree I am going to have to carry losses.

“We want to win, see players on the pitch knowing the geography, where they should be. I want to see them learning in passages of play from the previous result, the way we train, and making sure we have a solid foundation next season."