Wanderers are back on course – and Ian Evatt hopes returning belief in the camp can contribute to a winning December.

Fifth in the table after the weekend FA Cup break, the Bolton squad returned to the training ground this morning to start preparing for Friday night’s visit of Bristol Rovers.

Evatt’s men face five league games this month – three at home, two away – in what is traditionally the time of year that separates the genuine promotion contenders from those destined to fall away.

The Wanderers boss thinks the short hiatus after the Papa Johns Trophy victory against Barrow will help his players gear up for the task ahead.

“It is a reset,” he told The Bolton News. “We had a better month in November, got ourselves back to where we want to be in the league table.

“We’ve picked up 10 points out of the last five league fixtures which is promotion form, two points a game, regardless of performance levels. I think we’re starting to get the confidence back. I can see that coming in spells.

“I thought Fleetwood was excellent, first half against Barrow was excellent, and it’s hard to have that fluidity when you make so many changes to the team.

“But I trust them all, we have to share the responsibility and they got the job done, which was the most important thing. Now we regroup and focus on Friday.”

Wanderers failed to win a game last December as injuries and Covid bit hard into the squad and even forced the postponement of some games.

Evatt is hoping for more this season from a deeper squad which appears to have stabilised in form after short dips at the start and end of October.

“The Christmas period is always a challenging and difficult period,” he said. “If you have a really good Christmas, you end up really kicking on, and if you don’t, you can get drawn back into the group and the pack.

“We want to really focus all our attention on the Christmas period and December in particular. We’ll have a cup game thrown in as well (Wanderers are currently scheduled to face Manchester United’s Under-21s on December 16) and hopefully we can continue towards that Wembley goal.

“There’s lots of things to be positive about. It was a really good game tonight, I thought they came to play which is great credit to them and we managed to get through, but now we’ll focus on the league.”