WANDERERS are praying for some good news on defender George Johnston after he was injured in Saturday’s opening friendly win against Bamber Bridge.

It is feared that the 24-year-old has damaged knee ligaments after getting his studs caught in the turf during a heavy challenge 10 minutes into the game.

He left the stadium wearing a leg brace and will have scans early this week to assess the amount of damage caused but Ian Evatt admitted he was “fearing the worst” with Johnston facing an extended spell on the side-line.

“It doesn’t look good,” he told The Bolton News. “At this time of year when you are coming to play teams like this who don’t have the finance required for pitch irrigation, you’ll get sticky surfaces, studs caught in the ground. It is just the nature of football, and George was very unfortunate. As it stands right now we are fearing the worst with his knee but we’d welcome some positive news.

“It poured down for an hour or two as I was travelling up to the game, and I was thinking ‘this is great’ and then you get here and it felt like someone had turned the heaters on and everywhere had dried up.

“There’s nothing you can do about it – these things happen, we just have to hope that there is some better news down the line on George.”

Eoin Toal will also miss the start of the season after suffering a setback in his recovery from an ankle injury initially sustained in the Papa Johns Trophy final.

“It is still the same injury,” Evatt explained. “He came back last season because it was crucial at the time and had some steroid in the ankle to help manage the pain. Once that wore off the injury was still there, the ligament was still damaged. Now it looks like he will miss the start of the season, which is not good news.

“What we have done to repair the ligament was give him a PRP injection, which stimulates repair, but the first one didn’t work how we wanted it to and we have had to go back to the beginning.

“He has had that injection again now but he has to stay off his feet for a couple of weeks, so the knock on effect is that once he does get up and around again, he will need some time on the grass and some fitness work to get him up to speed.”

Last week’s signing of Will Forrester meant Bolton had six fit centre-halves but Johnston and Toal’s injury has suddenly put Evatt’s defensive department under pressure once again.

“Things change really quickly – it is really hard to balance the squad out but myself and Chris (Markham) are doing the best we possibly can if the worst should happen,” he added. “Today, with George, it looks like it possibly has.”