IAN Evatt hopes Wanderers fans can enjoy their Christmas dinner after watching their team get back to winning ways against Leyton Orient.

Three points may have been earned the hard way after letting a 3-0 lead slip to 3-2 in the second half but after successive defeats against Portsmouth and Bristol Rovers, the Bolton boss was happy to end the sequence.

Wanderers moved into third spot, behind Peterborough United, after 90 minutes which adhered to the old footballing cliché about a ‘game of two halves’.

“That’s football,” Evatt shrugged, after picking up his own 100th victory in charge of the Whites. “They saw some good stuff first half and then us digging in during the second half.

“Hopefully the fans can have a good Christmas now, stay safe and healthy, and look forward to Lincoln.

“We have to reset and move on – all that counts over the Christmas period is finding a way to win. We don’t have time to process performances and tweak things here and there. You have to roll your sleeves up, graft and try to get results.

“We will have to utilise the squad because it is physically challenging to play the way we do. As Jurgen Klopp would say, it’s heavy metal football. It is intense and front foot.

“We need to park that result now and get result for another difficult one on Boxing Day.”

Wanderers roared out of the stalls with three goals inside the first 10 minutes and should have been four ahead when Dion Charles passed up a big chance to score his second of the game on the stroke of half time, clean through on the keeper.

“We were upset with the last two games and we wanted to react in the right way,” Evatt said of the fast start. “I think the way we started the game was so good, there was so much quality in the goals we scored. They were fantastic.

“The chance on half time probably seals it and challenges what the second half looks like. At three they were just having a go and we didn’t react and respond in the way that we should but we managed to find a way.”

Evatt was happy with the performance of defender Will Forrester, who came in as a replacement for the suspended Ricardo Santos.

“Crucial blocks, he defends the penalty area really well, he was calm in possession, I was pleased with him,” he added.

But the Wanderers boss said some of his other selection decisions were made based on the expected grey and windy conditions on Saturday afternoon.

“For example, Paris Maghoma has been a really good player for us but this wasn’t really a game for him,” he said. “The conditions out there were really blustery and you don’t really sense it from the sides.

“We trained over the last couple of days here to get a sense of what it would be like – we could see the forecast and we knew how it was going to be.

“They are a really difficult opponent because of the set plays, because of the long throw, and how direct they can be at times.

“Second half we could have been better but the all-important thing was to win the game.”