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Opportunity knocks for a handful of Wanderers players at Plymouth – and Ian Evatt is challenging someone to step up and prove their worth.
With several players injured and suspended, the Bolton squad has rather unexpectedly been stretched wafer thin ahead of their long trip to Home Park.
Harry Brockbank, Liam Gordon, Amadou Bakayoko and Josh Sheehan came into the side for Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at home to Wigan after Gethin Jones, Declan John and Kieran Lee were struck down injured – but Evatt will also have to find a replacement for the suspended Ricardo Santos on Tuesday night.
“We just need to get back to what we have been for the majority of this season,” said the Bolton boss, looking ahead to a visit to the League One leaders.
“We have to get back to playing our way, believing in the way we play.
“Obviously with the injuries we’ve got and suspensions now that there are opportunities for people and they have to stand up and take those opportunities.
“There are no good knocking on my door saying ‘I want to play and why am I not playing?’ when you’re given the opportunity and you don’t take it.
“They need to take it and they need to stand up and we need to react as a group. We need to stick together.”
The performance of Bakayoko and Brockbank on Wanderers’ right side came in for particular criticism in defeat against Wigan – but Evatt says he and the players will take collective blame for the result.
“We can’t just put it on them because, as a team, we were all under par,” he said.
“It spread like a disease. We started poorly and then lacked confidence and belief and conceded a really poor goal from a mistake, it sapped the life out of us.
“Our body language went, we were frustrated, and the things we normally do well we were not doing again.
“We’ve all got to take a long hard look at each other and go again. It doesn’t mean we’re a bad team.
“We have suffered a really heavy defeat and a bad result against our biggest rivals but we’ve done a lot of good things so far this season and this club has come a long way in a short period of time and sometimes on the back of results like this, you can lose sight of how far we’ve come.”
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