RICARDO Santos is ready to return to the Wanderers starting line-up against Barnsley on Tuesday night.

Last season’s player of the year has been laid low by a foot injury and a bout of Covid in recent weeks but made the bench for Saturday’s 3-3 draw with MK Dons.

Ian Evatt expects to make changes for the Carabao Cup first round clash, with Santos among those players likely to start.

The Bolton boss also admits he was tempted to throw him straight in against MK despite his time away from the training ground.

“Rico isn’t far away at all,” he said. “In fact I would think he will play on Tuesday.

“It was challenging [whether to select him against the Dons] because I’ve got one part of me that wants to play him because I know how good he is, but the other part is I know how important he is to us.

“And if it had been too much too soon and we ended up breaking him then we are going to miss him for a lengthy period of time, so it was short-term pain for long-term gain, really.”

Wanderers have not lost their opening game of the season in three successive years since 1949 but were heading that way until stoppage time at the UniBol.

Evatt maintains his team was worthy of a point, having showcased some encouraging attacking football on the day.

“I’d argue that their errors weren’t punished and ours were,” he said. “Our goals that we actually scored - obviously Josh’s was a moment of brilliance - but the other two were actually well worked and well created. It was always going to be that way with two very good teams that play open expansive football. That’s what we want to see.”

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