SPURRED by the hurt of the Wigan defeat – Ian Evatt reckons Wanderers showed their true colours in an impressive victory against promotion rivals Derby County.

Bolton returned to the top two with a performance that the manager said was fuelled by the disappointment of their last outing on home turf.

Dion Charles’ first-half penalty and a deflected winner for Josh Dacres-Cogley earned an important three points, making a timely statement in what had been a tricky two weeks for Evatt and his players.

“We’d talked to the players before the game, before Middlesbrough, that this had become our derby – literally – and we wanted to right a few wrongs, and start the way we should have started against Wigan,” Evatt explained.

“We were aggressive, front foot, and we have learned some valuable lessons from that result.

“It still hurts us, and we are very apologetic for how it went down, but it shouldn’t define what and who we are. I think the result that day was a little bit of an anomaly, but we have reacted well.

“When you start like that, get the fans onside, this stadium is positive and rocking, it can be a difficult place to come.”

The heavy defeat against Wigan promoted well-worn questions about Bolton’s ability to play their expansive possession-based game against more physical opponents. And though Derby were eventually reduced to 10 men when goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith received a straight red for handling outside his area, the Whites proved otherwise even when their opponents had a full complement.

“The Wigan game hurt us, it did rock us, but we had to understand what happened and learn from it,” Evatt explained.

“We had to change and grow and I could see that first-hand there, we did exactly what we didn’t do in that game.

“And as I have said, I don’t think the results and performances we had prior to that game really served us well. We had things all our own way and perhaps were not ready for that fight. It perhaps gave us a slap around the chops and said to the lads ‘hey, you need to find a different way’.

“We had to get the basics right and since then I think we have done that. We needed to learn, and hopefully that will never happen again.”

Evatt also confirmed that he did not make moves for a new goalkeeper on deadline day after receiving news that Joel Coleman will be out for four or five weeks with a calf tear.

“He has a decent calf injury but we had the international break within that and we have recalled Luke Hutchinson, who we have a lot of faith and trust in. If anything happened to Nathan then we have him here,” he said.

“If anything did happen in that short period that Joel will be out – we think it will be four or five weeks – we could also utilise the emergency loan market.

“It didn’t really affect what we were going to do.

“I am delighted with the squad we have got, and we have players who can do multi-functional roles within the team. I think we are pretty well-stocked.”