IAN Evatt couldn’t care less if he comes under fire at Wigan Athletic tomorrow – just as long as his players make him proud on the pitch.

The Wanderers boss is well aware how his words have gone down with ‘those down the road,’ especially with the Latics now looking odds-on to make an immediate return to the Championship.

Local passions will no doubt burn brightly once again at the DW Stadium, and Evatt expects he will get plenty of reminders from the home crowd of just how intensely he has chased promotion this season in the press.

But after suffering a result he described as an “embarrassment” at the UniBol earlier this season, he is keen to give Bolton’s fans some bragging rights before the season is out.

“Some of the things I say are provocative,” he told The Bolton News. “I know that I am provocative, there is no denying that. But some of the things I say are for the benefit of my fans, my club and my players.

“It is not for them (Wigan fans) to read or even want to listen to, I have no interest in them listening or reading what I have to say. They should concentrate on their own club like we concentrate on ours.

“Come the end of the season, if they have been promoted and we have not then they have been better than us and we will hold our hands up and say, ‘congratulations, we will hopefully see you next year’. That is how it has to be.

“Rivalries are there every season to get bragging rights, to play two really competitive matches and see who the better team is on the day. They were better than us here, we have full confidence to go there and try to be better than them on Saturday, and if we can then great.”

Wigan have led from the front for much of the season and will be looking to complete a hat-trick of wins against Bolton this season, albeit one was by virtue of a penalty shoot-out in the League Cup.

Wanderers need snookers if they are going to get themselves into the play-off picture and even their maximum possible haul of 79 points might not be enough to occupy a top six position.

But Evatt believes Saturday lunchtime’s game will be a yardstick for their progress since January, as they take on a side he fully expects to go up automatically.

“Take away the rivalry and the local derby,” he said. “It is a benchmark for us at the moment because they are in the automatic promotion positions and that is where we want to get to.

“It is a good marker of how far we have come since January, a great test and no excuses this time. We have got a fully fit squad more or less, lots of good players and we will be ready. We have worked really well this week. We have tweaked one or two things, looking at ways we can hurt them, and we will see come Saturday.”