Early Bird Pick - EFL Cup

The EFL Cup gets underway for another season on Tuesday night, and while everyone else has been pre-occupied with the huge money moves in the Premier League on deadline day, the sharper eyed amongst you may have seen the stories of the proposed Bolton Wanderers dramatically halted at the final hour by a legal challenge.

The club are up in arms, but appear to be unable to prevent this intervention – at least for the time being. It’s definitely another spanner in the works and means they look highly unlikely to strengthen any further within the squad for a few weeks at least.

Josh Magennis left the club on deadline day, although he was not involved at Wycombe in any case, while on-loan Josh Earl was injured in midweek and will miss out, along with Connor Hall. I watched the match at Wycombe on the opening day, and while I was impressed with Bolton’s organisation in the way they set themselves up, they did absolutely nothing to threaten the Chairboys.

Given that Coventry are trading at 1/2 to win at Bolton on Saturday, it’s hard to make Rochdale a 17/20 shot at home for the EFL Cup match. In their opening match at Wycombe, Bolton fielded Harry Brockbank (20), Liam Edwards (22), Dennis Politic (19), Callum King-Harmes (17), Eddie Brown (18) and Yoan Zouma (21), so experience is seriously short.

Let’s support Dale in a few ways.

4pts Rochdale to win at 17/20 (Bet365)

1pt Rochdale (-1) at 12/5 (General)

1pt Rochdale (-2) at 7/1 (Betfair)

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