Bolton Wanderers v Reading - The Big Match Preview

Whether the manager’s stock has fallen to unrecoverable levels over the last five games is still up for debate, as is the timeframe for which the club’s underperformance should be judged.

But for 18 players and a technical area full of staff on Saturday there will be a 90-minute public interview that they can ill-afford to fluff.

Reading come to Bolton with bigger problems. Their seven-year decline under owner Dai Yongge appeared to be completed until recently when a takeover by ex-Wycombe chief Rob Couhig collapsed.

Promises have been made that the club will be sold and that funding is available to continue the business as normal but for the fans who have galvanised impressively around manager Ruben Selles and his young squad, these are the latest worrying times in a bleak chapter for the Royals.

Indeed, Reading may feel they travel to the North West with a chance of capitalising on some vulnerability. Wanderers have not scored a goal at home this season and face intense pressure to show something of the improvement Evatt pledged when he brought in eight new signings this summer, adding to a squad that had only missed out on automatic promotion by a slim margin.

John McAtee, Chris Forino, Scott Arfield, Jay Matete, Luke Southwood, Szabi Schon, Klaidi Lolos and Jordi Osei-Tutu represented an upgrade on the core Whites squad which was only lightly trimmed at the end of last season. This is, by some distance, the deepest and strongest squad that Evatt has worked with in his four years in charge and though injuries have not been kind, the leeway being offered by a frustrated fanbase is minimal.

Emotions were high after the 4-0 hiding against Huddersfield Town last weekend, and so it is perhaps fair not to judge and scrutinise every sentence uttered. Evatt may yet find the answers – and has before – but the margin for error is also decreasing on a weekly basis and the Reading game now feels as though it is being played more on a powder keg than a patch of grass.

Wanderers must find a way to numb the nerves that were so evident in the second half last weekend and, to use George Thomason’s term, “rediscover belief” in a style of football which has relied so heavily on confidence this last few years.

Evatt has often been the one inflating ego – giving his players the bravado and bluster they needed to execute a brand which, when done correctly, is effective and easy on the eye. But when the manager himself looked lost for words, as he most certainly did last weekend, it is difficult not to be concerned.

Many supporters have called for the manager to shift to a more pragmatic approach, to reduce the information burden on his players, but the squad has been assembled to Evatt’s individual design and changing the grand plan seems unlikely in the extreme.

It was hoped that Wanderers could follow Ipswich’s example and play a brand which instantly sits well in the Championship, giving them the best chance to succeed longer-term. Unfortunately, in the same way Oxford United found a way to choke the Whites with their own possession in the play-off final, more opposing sides have been able to counteract, and Evatt’s players have struggled to make the right on-pitch decisions to alter their own destiny.

Evatt has only once lost four league games on the spin, that run coming at the end of 2021 when his injury-ravaged squad, newly promoted to League One, were beaten by Fleetwood, Accrington, Rotherham and Wycombe. His managerial reign kicked-off with five September defeats in a row but also included a couple of cup games.

He once joked that the absence of supporters in the building back in the pandemic days might well have saved his job but now faces a similar test of resolve with 20,000 expectant eyes watching his team’s every move from the terraces.

Wanderers desperately need to produce some evidence that their manager’s plan works and that he can get promotion form out of a squad of players that should surely be doing a lot better.