IAN Evatt said he would be seeking “conversations” with the Wanderers board after a heavy defeat at home to Huddersfield Town left his side in the League One relegation zone.

The Bolton boss admitted that the result – a third league defeat on the spin – had left him considering his next step.

Two goals from Josh Koroma and one each from Ben Wiles and Anthony Evans handed Michael Duff’s Huddersfield a routine win and prompted chants of “sacked in the morning” from the away end.

Whether that decision will be made remains to be seen but Evatt found it difficult to sum up a desperate 90 minutes as he spoke to the local press.

“I am distraught,” he said. “I don’t really have the words. It is hard for me to come off the back of that and speak to you guys, as you can imagine. It is difficult to manage my emotions.

“We were out-fought, out-battled, they were better technically than we were, it was as bad as I have seen since I have been at the club. It is extremely damaging and hurtful to us all at the football club.

“From the moment the final whistle went at Wembley I felt a massive black cloud and negative energy around the whole club. At the minute I can’t seem to shift it and I can’t find the answers.

“I feel like that is everything against what I am as a person, what we have built here, and at the minute I don’t have the answers.”

Asked what his next step will be, and whether he may take the decision to leave the job he has held for just over four years, he added: “I don’t know. I have always tried to be straight and honest with you guys, very respectful, try to tell the truth, but the truth is that really hurt me.

“I have been through a lot of tough things in my life and it has created the man I am today.

“This is as tough as it gets. I don’t want to taint and tarnish everything I have done and created here. That today has really hurt me, personally.

“One thing I always do is back myself. I am an extremely confident person. It is tough for me to give you the answers you want because I don’t have them right now.

“I need to go away and think and have some conversations, see what happens.”

Wanderers have won one of their first five games, but also only 13 from 41 since the turn of the calendar year.

The play-off final defeat against Oxford United in May has proven particularly damaging and Evatt admits there has been a noticeable effect on his players.

“I have said the minute we lost that final, I felt in and out of the club a huge negative energy,” he said. “Everyone was just traumatised by it.

“We have come back and I think there has been a huge amount of negativity towards me, towards the players, and we can’t seem to shift and change it.

“The way we play is built around confidence and at the minute we have zero. So, yes, that is the truth. I don’t know what else to say to you.”