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Wanderers won’t be wallowing in Saturday’s defeat at Sheffield Wednesday if Ian Evatt has got anything to do with it.
The Bolton boss is looking to move on quickly from a frustrating afternoon at Hillsborough and talk of missed opportunities to concentrate his efforts on returning to winning ways against Wigan Athletic on Saturday.
Evatt had few complaints with the way his side played at Wednesday, with the obvious exception of failing to get on the scoreboard for the fifth time in 12 league games.
Ordinarily, such a statistic would suggest there are big issues with the Bolton attack, but the numbers also show they have scored 20 times this season – a total bettered only by MK Dons.
As such, Evatt believes a more supportive approach is needed if the Whites are to find more consistency in their goal returns.
“We will pick the players up, positive messaging and reinforcement,” he said. “They know they’re good, you don’t come to Sheffield Wednesday, play with that sort of bravery, that level of detail, without believing yourself to be a good player.
“Now we need to turn those excellent performances into consistent wins. And that’s the next stage of our development.
“There isn’t any difference, apart from possibly Cambridge, where we still had 70 odd per cent of the ball but weren’t quite ourselves, every other league game could have equalled us scoring four or five goals.
“We did at Ipswich, we did at Charlton, we did on Tuesday night (against Liverpool), we’re capable of it.
“But there are also those occasions where we are not scoring, not taking those chances, and getting sucker-punched.
“To use the boxing analogy we dominate the whole fight and then get knocked out in the 12th round – and it can happen.”
Asked if Wanderers - who dropped to eighth as a result of Saturday’s defeat – are ahead of his own schedule this season, Evatt added: “No, we’re behind.
“I expect us to be number one. I expect us to be first.
“I think we’re the best team in the league. People will say that’s arrogance, that’s overconfidence, but on performances I believe we’re the best team in the league. We should have won all those games.”
Evatt maintains the performance at Wednesday was significantly better than the result suggests.
“There were nice moments from everybody,” he said. “I can’t speak highly enough of every single one of them.
“Eoin (Doyle) again put in an immense shift, Antoni (Sarcevic) got a nasty kick in the first half and was really struggling with his leg but carried on and was great.
“They were all fantastic, there isn’t one player that I can’t pick out. Just again that final bit, that final decision, that final bit of detail and the clinical edge - other than that, it was a pass perfect performance.”
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