WIN or lose, Ian Evatt just wants his Wanderers side to give the right account of themselves for the rest of this season.
The Bolton boss reckons the distance between the ceiling and floor of this season’s performances has been too wide, with the notable lows coming in heavy defeats against Huddersfield Town and Stockport County.
Saturday’s win against Blackpool was Evatt’s 100th in charge of Wanderers in the league, which eventually took them to ninth place in the table, level on points with the play-off positions.
And though he anticipates plenty of twists and turns in the months ahead before the end of the season, he has pinpointed consistency in performance as a target to hit between now and May.
“Everyone loses games – Birmingham have lost at Shrewsbury today, anything can happen, and Manchester City have been losing, so if they can, anyone can,” he said. “It is just the manner in which we have lost games and our floor has been too low at times, we have to rectify that.
"We need to be more consistent but when we do lose, it is about how we lose. We have to lose being ‘us’ and Stockport and Huddersfield in particular just wasn’t ‘us’.
“Hopefully we have built a little credit back with a win against a local rival and we have got a game coming up around the corner which we need to perform better in, but before that we have some big games which can put us closer to the league position we want to be in.”
George Thomason returned from six weeks out injured to score the equalising goal against his former club in the second half, and Evatt was equally happy with the return of Gethin Jones for his first league start of the season.
“Just having him and Gethin around the group this week has helped,” he said. “They are leaders, throwbacks in terms of how they go about their work and business.
“They are vocal and that kind of leadership in the modern game has disappeared but not with those two. They make people around them better, of course they are good players in their own right but they make those around them better and we saw that in the second half today.”
Aaron Collins also built on his two goals against Fleetwood in the Vertu Trophy to score his sixth of the season in the 94th minute to claim all three points.
The Welsh striker had a couple of big chances in the second half but came good when it matters.
Evatt said: “That’s football, isn’t it? I a probably going to shout at him for missing that easy opportunity but this game is all about margins and moments and Aaron is certainly a moments player who is capable of big ones.”
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