Amadou Bakayoko played for Bolton Wanderers' B team to get minutes in his legs and played longer than anticipated originally as Matt Craddock hailed his impact on his young group of players.
Bakayoko has missed a part of pre-season owing to a slight knee problem which meant he missed a couple of the club's first team fixtures before the League One campaign starts. Wanderers begin the season on July 30 away to Ipswich Town.
The Sierra Leone international returned to action last weekend in the 3-1 loss on the road to Carlisle United. He came off the bench in the second half against the Cumbrians.
READ MORE: Supercomputer predicts Bolton Wanderers, Derby County & Sheffield Wednesday's promotion chances
Last night, Bakayoko started for the Whites' B team as they took on non-league side Bamber Bridge. Brig's Fin Sinclair-Smith scored what proved to be the winner after the break, though Wanderers went close through Conor Carty with an effort which came off the crossbar.
Speaking after the game, Craddock said the plan was for Bakayoko to play the first half at the Sir Tom Finney Stadium. But because the forward felt good, he stayed on until the hour mark as the B team head coach hailed his impact on a young group which is still learning and felt that there were plenty of positives to take from their second half performance in particular.
Craddock said: "He (Bakayoko) just needed some minutes tonight. 45 minutes we had in mind, and he felt really good so we gave him another 15. I think if we would have let him have his way, he would have probably carried on so we had to drag him off in the end! He is fantastic for the lads and he has been brilliant with the group.
"The manager said at the weekend we win or we learn and we’re learning every week. Sometimes it’s disappointing, the players are disappointed and it’s our job to be quite consistent and quite calm and keep them going because learning has peaks and troughs and it was brilliant to be playing with Tuttey (Andrew Tutte), with Baka today, because the players learn off them.
“A young group and we’ll continue learning. We’re back in tomorrow morning and we’ll view the video and we’ll learn again and we’ve got an even tougher game next week, so we’ll just keep learning and we’ll keep going.”
“Plenty of positives in the second half. I think we’ve got a young group that have been thrown together quite quickly and what we want them to try and do is solve the problems that we had in the first half. We obviously helped them at half-time and then they put that into practice in the second half and looked a million times better.
“Where they have to get to is they have to be able to solve that problem themselves and recognise what the problem was but another pleasing learning experience for us. Bamber Bridge gave us something completely different to what Atherton gave us last week and I think with the pitch quality that they have here, when we did have possession, particularly in the second half, I think we showed some real quality.
“I think we moved the ball well, we got into some really good areas and on another day maybe get a penalty and if we’re a little bit more incisive, we probably create a few more chances but I think a lot of positives from the second half. The first half is a learning one for us and I think the quicker we can learn those lessons and the quicker we can solve things in action during the game the quicker these guys will develop.”
Don't miss a thing from the club you love! For all the latest updates on Wanderers , sign up to our free newsletter packed with all the latest news here.
READ NEXT:
