LIFE is proving tough at the top for Wanderers right now – but Ian Evatt has asked supporters to stick with them for the final push.

The Whites passed up a golden opportunity to climb into the top two on Tuesday night as they slipped to a 1-0 defeat at Wigan Athletic on the same night Derby County lost at home to Charlton Athletic.

Following hot on the heels of another poor result across Lancashire in Blackpool, frustration and concern among the fanbase is suitably high as the club moves into the last dozen games of the season.

Evatt defended his team’s performance at the DW Stadium, insisting it merited more than it got. But Bolton will have to do it the hard way, with their run-in including fixtures against each of the sides currently placed around them in the top seven.

“Nobody said it was going to be easy, because going for promotion just isn’t,” he told The Bolton News. “Derby’s result means we are no worse off and we have got them all to play.

“My concern is ourselves and our performance level. I can accept not getting results when we perform like that because I know it won’t happen often. We will get more results playing like that.

“We are all disappointed with the result, of course we are, but I’d like to think that anyone in the stadium would have appreciated how the game panned out.

“It hurts more because we wanted to put it right for the fans, we really did, and you could see that by the way we went about our business.

“For whatever reason it hasn’t happened, so all we can do is try and focus on getting promoted because if we do, I think they will forgive us for that last few days.

“To the fans, we’d apologise for the result of course, but we really need them to stay behind us over this next 12 games.”

There could yet be some repercussions for events after the final whistle in which players and staff from both sides clashed in front of the away end.

Evatt – who had a disciplinary hearing at the Football Association yesterday after his red card at Northampton Town and is waiting to hear whether he will be on the touchline for Saturday’s game against Cambridge United – was upset at the actions of Wigan’s on-loan Fulham forward, Martial Godo.

“Godo was running basically the whole length of our fans with his hands to his ears,” he explained.

“He was goading them – Godo-ing them – and it is not right, we won’t accept it.

“They probably deserved to celebrate in front of their own fans because of the amount they ran in that game but they shouldn’t be doing that to our supporters, it isn’t right.”

Evatt added that Randell Williams would be back in the frame for Cambridge, with both Dion Charles and Nathan Baxter also a possibility after injury.