RICHARD O’Donnell revved up for City’s curtain-raising Carabao Cup trip to Bolton insisting: “We don’t fear anyone in our league”.

Saturday’s first-round tie will serve as a good indicator for both sides ahead of the new League Two campaign, which kicks off the following week.

Ian Evatt’s start as title favourites after signing 15 players since being relegated, including former Bantams marksman Eoin Doyle.

The Irishman makes his Bolton debut against the club he left in January amid a prolific scoring spell for Swindon.

But O’Donnell is excited by the challenge of facing their fancied opponents – and shutting down Doyle.

The City keeper said: “It’s a good gauge of where we’re at going into the season.

“It’s been well-documented that Bolton have spent quite a bit of money and there’s a lot of expectation on them.

“They’ve signed some big-name players and spent a bit before the salary cap came in. They are a big club at this level as our we.

“We’ll go there looking to win the game. We definitely don’t fear anyone in our league.

“We feel that we’re in a good place and really looking forward to getting going.

“If we need to iron a few things out before the league season starts, we’ve obviously got another week to do so.”

Doyle netted 25 goals to steer Swindon to promotion last term but failed to score in the four games he played for City before making that move permanent.

But after such a long break since the season was brought to a premature end in March, O’Donnell reckons that past form will not be a factor.

“I don’t think you can really gauge where anybody is going to be at with the start of the season,” he added.

“It’s going to be difficult because it’s been such a long time. A lot of things can happen in that time, both as a team and individually.

“When you’re on a hot streak, you want the games to come thick and fast.

“But nobody’s had that luxury of playing for six months so it’s going to be interesting to see.

“You’re probably looking at the first 10 games and we might still not know where everybody is at because of the lack of pre-season matches compared to what they normally have.

“I got on really well with Eoin and have a lot of time for him and he obviously did extremely well at Swindon last season.

“But it will be like any other game for us in terms of what we’re coming up against.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’ll have to pay attention to a player like Doyler because we know he’s a good finisher after what he did last year.

“We’ll prepare for that as we would any other striker and threat in the league. It’s just any other game except it’s a familiar face that we’ll be playing against.”

City were badly let down by their away form last season. They went 12 games without a win after the last success at Morecambe.

O’Donnell added: “We obviously need to improve on that but it’s been such a long time that it’s not really in the back of anyone’s head. Nobody really remembers it.

“It feels like a clean slate.”