IAN Evatt refused to be despondent after watching his side concede three goals in the last half-hour against Championship Middlesbrough.

Wanderers had been right in the game to the hour mark but started to lose ground after making changes, eventually losing their first public friendly 3-0 in Bishop Auckland.

Boro eased to victory with goals from Manu Latte Lath and Sonny Finch and a late Delano Burgzorg penalty, but Evatt admitted a raft of injured players – now including Kyle Dempsey – has made it difficult for him to keep a competitive team on the pitch for 90 minutes as the rest work their way to full fitness.

“For me, it is just positive,” he told The Bolton News. “The first 60 minutes with a really competitive league-ready team we showed what we can do.

“There are one or two tweaks, one or two alterations, and I thought they worked really well and that we held our own against a really good team. Obviously, because of the eight injuries we have at the moment it is hard for us to field two teams that are really competitive.

“We have thrown the B Team in at the deep end and we are asking too much of them because they are not ready for that yet. The ones that came on – George, Dan, Scotty and Az, it is not really a fair reflection of how the last half-hour went for them.

“For us, it is about the first league game of the season. We need some players back, we need to recruit more and we are working very hard to do that. But, for me, there was nothing but positives to take from that first 60 minutes, I thought we were excellent.”

Evatt had hinted that a slightly different tactical approach would be used this summer, and Wanderers started with a 5-2-3 formation – Klaidi Lolos, Victor Adeboyejo and Aaron Collins forming a new-look attack.

The Bolton boss felt the new system caused a few problems for Boro in the first hour.

He said: “They are a threat. There have been a few tweaks and you have noticed what one of them is, having a front three, and they combined really well. They were disciplined out of possession and if teams want to try and play through us and we steal it, we’re a massive threat on turnover, so I was delighted with the way they looked.

“I genuinely felt we were comfortable and in control, we looked a threat in transition, which is something we are trying to develop into, and I was really pleased with the way, against a really good in-possession team, that we nullified their threats.

“It was a set forward and we shouldn’t lose sight of that really, it could be misconstrued a bit into being something it isn’t. We are throwing on players who simply are not ready for that level yet, and that’s no fault of theirs, they may be one day, but just not yet.”