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Wanderers must move on quickly from the melee at Morecambe and produce a better performance against Charlton Athletic tomorrow night, says Ian Evatt.
Unbeaten in five, the Whites look to consolidate their place in the top 10 against the in-form Londoners, who have themselves come into a positive run of form in recent weeks.
Saturday’s controversial scenes at the Mazuma Stadium still dominated the agenda at Evatt’s pre-match press conference yesterday, but this time the Bolton boss wants his team’s performance to grab the headlines at the UniBol.
“We are looking forward to the game, and believe it or not, we don’t want any of this,” he said of the media interest in the Morecambe game. “We don’t want the sideshows.
“We want to be a football team that are attractive and pleasing on the eye and entertain our own fans.
“That didn’t happen the way we wanted it on Saturday, but we not have a home game to give us an opportunity to go out there and enjoy our football.” Evatt held a team meeting on Monday morning to address the weekend’s fallout, updating his players on the arrest made by Morecambe police of a 61-year-old man for a “racially aggravated” public disorder offence.
His stance on abuse has not changed, and having led his players off the pitch on Saturday, Evatt said he would not think twice about doing so again.
“We had a conversation this morning with the players,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it is one comment or a hundred comments. It is zero tolerance.
“As a squad and as their manager and leader, if we hear one comment which we feel is over the line and especially racial, we will walk off. Simple as that.
“That’s our policy and that’s been decided by the players, especially the black and ethnic players. We discussed it, we discussed it months ago and that will remain our policy moving forwards.”
Evatt said he was “proud” of his team’s resilience to come back and snatch a point in their previous game but admitted he would have selected a different line-up, had he known what the weather conditions would have been like.
The Wanderers boss now wants a better display against Charlton as they look to string together a fourth successive home victory.
“Saturday, from a football point of view, was not good enough,” he said. “I was disappointed with our performance.
“We can’t pick teams on weather forecasts. That becomes really challenging.
“We set teams up to play the way we want to play. On the Friday, when we’re going through specific set plays or more detailed opposition work, we can’t look at the weather forecast and say we need to pick these players for this day. We got there, and it was everything that we don’t want. Wind, rain, boggy pitch, it became very challenging to play the way we want to play but even still, I think we could have done better than what we did on the day.”
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