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Wanderers boss Ian Evatt wants his players to focus on the bigger picture ahead of Saturday’s clash with Gillingham.
The Whites suffered a 3-0 loss at league leaders Plymouth on Tuesday night – their third successive defeat.
But Evatt wants his players to remember all they have achieved over the past 12 months following last season’s thrilling promotion.
“It’s been a tough week but we must remember it is only a week,” said the Bolton boss. “Sometimes a week in football is a long time and a couple of poor results and performances, maybe not the performance so much on Tuesday, but certainly a poor result.
“You can feel very sorry for yourselves and all of a sudden, people can think you’re a bad team, but you don’t become a bad team overnight.
“We’ve done lots of things right for a long, long time and this is probably our first sticky run since January, so we’re very fortunate for that.
“We just want to put it behind us now and get a result on Saturday.”
Evatt admits his side didn’t adapt to the tough conditions at Home Park on Tuesday night and says it is something they need to work on in the coming weeks and months.
“I think we’ve got a very good plan A to be honest,” he added. “People can speak about plan Bs all the time but for me we just need to be better at plan A.
“We’re not blessed to be able to recruit a shedload of players to have different plans. We recruit to a plan and we’ve recruited for that plan, and the plan B (against Plymouth) should have been weather conditions and opposition recognition.
“That’s what we have to be better at, game management. Not necessarily changing our style or the way we play, but just recognising what we can and can’t do given the conditions coming into the winter months now.
“Conditions are going to deteriorate and we have to find another way. Tuesday, we carried on with plan A when really we should have gone slightly more direct and that was the thought behind Bakayoko starting as the nine.
“We just didn’t utilise it enough when we did do it and go slightly longer, we looked a threat.”
The Whites welcome Gillingham to the UniBol on Saturday afternoon and Evatt is confident his side can return to winning ways.
The Gills sit 19th in the league table but the Bolton boss insists they aren’t underestimating Steve Evans’ men.
“Huge, but we want to win every game we play,” said Evatt. “We try to win every game we play and we want to put an end to this disappointing week.
“We know what we have to do, it’s going to be a really tough game. We know what we’re getting with a Steve Evans team, there’s no hiding from that.
“We just have to make sure we stand up to that and then play the way that we can play and take our opportunities.”
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