George Johnston's warning for Bolton Wanderers at desperate Doncaster Rovers

Five points adrift of safety, Gary McSheffrey’s side are running low on time to make their move with just four games remaining.

Johnston sampled life at the wrong end of the table with Wigan Athletic last season as the club – then reeling from administration – teetered on the brink of relegation to League Two.

And with that in mind the 23-year-old has warned that Doncaster’s desperation for points will make them a difficult proposition at the Keepmoat Stadium.

“I have been in a relegation battle myself last season so I know what it’s like and they’ll be giving it everything,” Johnston told The Bolton News. “They will be well structured and they will know where they think they can hurt us and they will try and do that as much as they can throughout the game.

“But we take big backings to these away games with a lot of fans, so we’ve got to put on a performance for them.”

The general consensus in Doncaster suggests three points from Good Friday is a must if they are to retain their League One status for a sixth successive season.

Johnston believes their thirst for victory will make them vulnerable, if Bolton manage to stick to their own gameplan.

“They have to win, so there are going to be areas that we can exploit during transitions,” he said. “But with the quality we have, we think we can dominate the game from start to finish really and control it and then if we play the way we know that we can, we’ll get the three points.”

After Ricardo Santos was ruled out for the rest of the season with a hamstring injury Ian Evatt was forced to shuffle his defensive line last weekend.

Johnston was encouraged by the way a new-look back three adapted against Sheffield Wednesday last weekend and hopes they can make more progress as a unit at Doncaster.

“It is something the manager touched on when Rico went out injured, but we coped with it and we knew we’d have to be a bit more solid defensively,” he said of adapting to a different defensive style.

“We can’t rely on Rico to cover up behind us, especially when we went to the four against Sheffield Wednesday, me and Will (Aimson) talked during the week and made sure we were going to be solid at the back and just deal with their two threats up top.

“We knew if we dealt with them as much as possible we’ve always got a chance in the game with the late goals we’ve got recently. Unfortunately, we conceded from the corner but we felt like we kept them at bay most of the game.”

Johnston reckons last weekend’s late show against the Owls also showed that the team has progressed in the last few months. MJ Williams’ late equaliser ensured a third game unbeaten against clubs in the top half of the table “We said in the changing rooms, earlier in the season those might have finished 1-0 to the opposition or we might have folded and they might have put a few past us,” he said.

“But I think our character has massively improved within the group and we grind out those results. It might take 60 or 70 minutes for us to get a goal because we are a possession-based team, we do want to tire the opposition and wear them down.

“As long as we keep those clean sheets, we can nick one or two goals at the end as you saw with Lincoln at home, we put a couple past them towards the end. It is something we have to work on obviously.

“Defensively, we have got to keep those clean sheets and give our attackers a chance to score those late goals.”

Dropped points in November and December ultimately cost Wanderers their play-off pursuit but Johnston also cast his mind back to defeats earlier in the season which may have been different had the current squad been available.

“I think those two away games, Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland, were two of our ‘best’ losses because the way we played, we didn’t deserve to lose,” he said. “Against Wednesday, I feel like we played better away from home but we grinded out the result and that is all down to character and working hard for each other.”