THE severe reaction to the result and performance at Leyton Orient on Saturday did not shock Ian Evatt – in fact, the Bolton Wanderers boss took it as a compliment.

Few expected the Whites to let their standards slip in quite the fashion they did in East London but after a full debrief on Monday morning, Evatt and his players are now ready to make amends as they host Cheltenham Town tonight.

Wanderers dropped four points behind the top two as a result of defeat at Orient but can now bring themselves back to within a point of second-placed Peterborough United with victory in the rearranged match. With games in hand on all promotion rivals, Evatt reckons his players must put the criticism which followed their last outing to good use.

“I think we should take that as a massive compliment because we don’t and haven’t lost games very often, so when we do it is a shock to everyone’s system, including our own,” he said.

“That is because of the standards we set. We got to those levels and everyone is expectant and we have to live up to it.

“We are still in the strongest position of any team in the league even though we are not first, our destiny is still very much in our own hands.

“I have said before that we are going to lose games, we will face adversity, but it is how we respond which will define who we are.

“Yes, we had a negative result but every team around us have had those results as well at one time or another. And we need to be ready for the next one.”

Evatt described the Orient defeat at his team’s worst performance of the season and the slump did feel somewhat left-field, after an encouraging display against Premier League Luton in the FA Cup only days earlier.

A pair of missed chances from top scorer Dion Charles proved pivotal on the day, the manager reasoned.

“Having watched the game back we didn’t play very well but we had the best two chances of the game and should have come away with something,” he said. “For us, it has been an honest conversation, we have talked about why, and I expect a response.

“It is important we do discuss it and that we show the players what we wanted, what was executed incorrectly and showing them the right solutions.

“Having said that, I think their XG was 0.7 and ours was 1.6, something like that, so it shows the standards we have set. We played poorly but still underperformed our XG.

“On Tuesday we played ever so well when there was a huge ceiling but the drop off within three days was incredible and we can’t have that big an inconsistency.

“Even in some games when it is not going to be nice and attractive we have to find a level of performance that we didn’t do on Saturday.”