Bolton Wanderers have a plan for 'familiar foes' Barnsley

There has been little to split the two teams from either side of the Pennines over the last few seasons, even though the Tykes will claim they won the game that mattered most.

Wanderers are desperate to show they have evolved from the team edged out at this stage last season, one which can create and take chances under pressure, and who can cope with immense expectation to return to the Championship.

While facing an opponent without a permanent manager may ordinarily bring a sense of tactical unpredictability, Ian Evatt is quietly confident that the team and style that has served Barnsley well for the last couple of years will not alter significantly under caretaker, Martin Devaney.

Aggressive, dogged, provoking - a team that has managed to get under Bolton's skin.

In short, Evatt and the Bolton supporters will have seen this film before… Only this time they are hoping for a happier ending.

“Over the last couple of years we have played each other a lot,” Evatt told the local press on Wednesday. “Every game has been pretty tight apart from the one where Mads Andersen was sent off early on. Every game after that has been tight, a draw or a one-goal swing either way.

“Martin has been part of the coaching staff for a number of years now and a squad of players who have been used to playing a certain way for long time under Neil and under Michael Duff, and the game we saw on Saturday looked pretty similar to what we have seen from them in recent years.

“We predict what they will play like but being the manager of Bolton Wanderers, I know that teams change for us all the time and we have to understand what has changed and then react accordingly, find solutions to beat it.

“Teams will know how to prepare against us because whilst there are some nuances within our framework, we believe in our framework and we have had a lot of good results with it as well.

“They have a squad of players who have been recruited to play this way, with this system, and whilst Martin is in charge I can’t see much changing.

“But they will be confident that they have had some pretty good results against us, and vice-versa, so we have to be ready.”

Last season’s play-off between Peterborough United and Sheffield Wednesday proved that logic does not always apply at this stage of the season, when the stakes are so high.

Wanderers finished 11 points above Barnsley, won four more games, scored four and conceded 13 fewer goals, but they meet as equals at Oakwell.

With the second leg to be played at the Toughsheet next Tuesday night there is a slightly different psychology to this contest, the 50th to be played between the two sides in all competitions.

But Evatt wants to prepare for that game with a tangible advantage, and has prepared accordingly.

“I don’t know what advantage a home leg in the second game will be, to be honest,” he said. “As a player I managed to do it both ways and get through. You just have to take each game in isolation and give it the right respect.

“We can’t rest on the fact there is a home game to come, and try to get a positive result on Friday, which will then help our cause because we have clearly won more at home than we have away this season. Most teams do in a football season.

“I think it will be a good atmosphere on Tuesday night, and if we can get a result at Barnsley then it will only aid our cause for the second leg.

“But I am not even thinking or considering that yet – we obviously have an advantage of knowing what we will have to do at home in the second leg – but my focus is trying to treat this as a one-off game and trying to come out with the right result.

“We’re in a four-team tournament now and we have to come out the right side of it. We finished the highest out of all these teams, got the most points, so we should rightly have confidence, but we also know what has gone before us has finished and done. These games can throw up surprising results.

“We have made a plan for Oakwell and we’ll revisit things once we have got through it.”