"We switched off" - Evatt frustrated by sloppy defending in Tranmere defeat

Ian Evatt was at a loss to explain how Wanderers went from penalty box villains to heroes in the space of a few days.

After defending their goal so resolutely in Tuesday night’s victory at Cheltenham, the same old problems at set pieces dogged the Whites against Tranmere.

Veteran defender Peter Clarke opened the scoring with a free header from a corner, leaving the Bolton boss shaking his head in dismay.

“It is so frustrating,” he said, “especially at set pieces, and with what I had seen on Tuesday night at Cheltenham, how we had defended the box and the aerial assault from Cheltenham.

“Today we just switched off. We’d spoken about Peter Clarke, I’ve known him for many years and he’s the same age as me. I played up against him a lot as kids and I know he’s very good in the opposition box and he’ll defend his own box with his life – that’s what he is, that’s what he does – and we didn’t mark him properly so they went 1-0 up and we never managed to get back into the game.”

Evatt admits the game was all-but over after Kieron Morris grabbed a second goal on 68 minutes, driving a low shot past Matt Gilks from the edge of the box.

Tranmere then grabbed a third from the penalty spot when Alex Baptiste was adjudged to have handballed Morgan Ferrier’s cross.

Evatt complained, however, that referee Charles Breakspear should have stopped the game a few moments earlier.

“The referee was going to blow for a foul on Ryan Delaney on the halfway line, the whistle was in his mouth but he chose not to – and I didn’t see what happened in the box,” he said.

“I asked the ref after the game why he’d put his whistle in his mouth and he said ‘I thought it was a foul and then I didn’t think it was a foul’ and by that time the play had gone on.

“We are on the end of another indifferent decision. But it is what it is, we gave them the second goal eventually by backing off. The lad is 20 yards from goal and nobody engages with him.

“We backed off and the ball ended up in the back of the net, so it’s more or less game over.

“At 1-0 we were still in the game and we were always going to get chances and dominate the ball but we never gave ourselves an opportunity at 2-0 because we were already out of the game.”

Source

I never ever played a game of football and gave up at 0-2 down. If the manager thinks that way then what can he expect from his players? With 2 more losses ahead of us I'd be drawing up a list of potential replacements.

finlaymcdanger wrote: With 2 more losses ahead of us I'd be drawing up a list of potential replacements.

There is no way this manager will be replaced unless we get relegated IMO. Long gone are the days when we could just buy in a new manager and throw money at tearing up the squad and rebuilding - yet again. God only knows how many £millions we have pissed away doing that over recent years - and our experience has clearly shown that replacing the manager simply doesn't work. It's been one false dawn after another and as the saying goes, if we keep doing what we always did, we'll get what we always got - shit in our case.
It's time for Wanderers fans to grow up and stop throwing the toys out of the pram every time we go through a bad patch. Continuity is not something we have seen at this club for years and it's long overdue a return.
FV have picked Evatt for the long term and they have always said it's a project - which is all it was ever going to be after we escaped extinction by the skin of our teeth.
The reality is that nowadays we are an impoverished lower league club and we have to cut our cloth accordingly - and maybe for once get behind the team and the manager and hope for the best.
Personally I reckon Evatt has a fair bit of personal development to do himself but if we have any money at all, right now we need it on the pitch and not wasted on managerial recruitment and payoffs.
Maybe we should try continuity for once?