IAN Evatt reckons Ricardo Santos proved his worth to Wanderers in their confidence-boosting victory against his former club Peterborough United.

In what has been a rocky campaign for the centre-half, who found himself targeted for online abuse after the play-off final in May, Evatt says a star performance in Saturday’s 1-0 win was a timely reminder of his worth to the club.

The Bolton boss decided to switch captains from Santos to George Thomason in September to “remove pressure” allow him to concentrate completely on his form.

And the 29-year-old showed with a stellar display against Posh that he is now returning to top form.

“He was unbelievable,” Evatt told The Bolton News. “Again, I don’t have to sit here and justify how I feel about him, but for any Bolton Wanderers fan who sometimes doubts Rico’s ability, watch that performance and understand why he is so valuable to us.

“He is incredible, and obviously people will say ‘why can’t he do that every week?’ And we do want that consistently, but he wouldn’t be playing in League One if he could do that.

“I thought he was absolutely brilliant, back to his best.”

Evatt was in buoyant mood after Klaidi Lolos’s 98th minute goal – his first for the club – had earned a deserved three points.

Wanderers moved into ninth spot, two points outside the play-offs, at a time when the team’s consistency was being questioned in some quarters.

“We have won six games out of eight – give us a break,” he laughed.

“Six out of eight and we’re talking about consistency but that’s where we are at. I think we need to shift that mindset a bit and focus on what’s next.

“We were disappointed to lose at Birmingham on Tuesday but we responded in the right way and now we need to build on it for Tuesday at Stevenage.”

Evatt agreed, however, that while results have picked up since mid-September, the level of performance shown over 90 minutes against Peterborough had been an exception.

The manager met with players at Lostock last week to air his views in the aftermath of the Birmingham game.

He added: “Me and the players had a bit of a heart-to-heart on Thursday, to be honest, and they felt like even though we had been on a really good run, I was demanding more, I hadn’t seen ‘that’ and it is shifting them to the mindset that winning consistently is great, but performing consistently is better. It gives you a better chance of winning over time.

“You can only win so many games when you haven’t played as well, it will eventually catch you up and find you out.

“The more we play well will give us that better opportunity to have more moments like that. At the minute we are playing catch-up, we need to get our heads down and make sure this extra game on Tuesday is something we get points from.

“If we can finish off this league block strongly then it puts us in a good place.”