Bolton’s Under-23s suffered a heavy defeat last night as Crewe Alexandra’s youth team came to town.

The visitors triumphed 4-1 at the UniBol and the result is made somewhat more worrying due to the fact that Wanderers had a number of first-team players in action.

Dennis Politic and Joe Dodoo were joined by the likes of trialist Timi Elsnik, James Weir, Ronan Darcy, Luke Murphy, Sonny Graham and the returning Connor Hall and Josh Earl but were unable to muster up a result against Crewe.

(Photo by Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)

The Professional Development League defeat saw the Under-23s’ losing streak continue as they’re yet to earn anything other than losses so far this season.

It’s not a great sign when there are a number of highly-rated first-team players in action and they were still on the receiving end of a thumping defeat.

Although, hopefully, including first-team players such as Politic and Dodoo was an effort to increase their match fitness ahead of the weekend’s League One game rather than an attempt to win a Professional Development League game.

Bolton’s team that faced Coventry earlier in the season (Photo by Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)

If Keith Hill was looking at this Under-23s match to identify some possible talent for his injury-ridden squad, it’s unlikely the Bolton boss will have been impressed, at least not with the result.

Dennis Politic, Sonny Graham and Joe Dodoo are expected to feature against Rochdale but the likes of Ronan Darcy, Luke Murphy, James Weir and the newly-returning Connor Hall could have their work cut out for them.

When Bolton face Rochdale on Saturday, it will be the third time the two teams have faced each other this season and we’re only in October.

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