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Wanderers boss Ian Evatt has challenged his side to show what they are made of against Wycombe this weekend.
Evatt admits Wednesday night’s FA Cup defeat against Stockport County was a blow but insists they have the character to bounce against the Chairboys.
“This is football and things are always challenging,” said the Bolton boss. “Even in my short tenure here we’ve been through so much.
“Go back to last year conceding six at home to Port Vale and four away at Leyton Orient but still being promoted at the end of it.
“Football seasons are a long period of time, you can’t get too emotional on the back of one result.
“We had a poor October, we’ve come out of that and had some good results and now we’ve slipped back to another poor performance.
“It’s unforgiving, we have to forget it and respect that we weren’t good enough, but then challenge ourselves to be better this Saturday.”
Evatt described the performance against Stockport as “unacceptable” and says his side lost focus after a brilliant weekend on and off the pitch.
He added: “Having watched them train Monday and Tuesday, was I surprised? No. I just felt like because of the fantastic weekend we’d had, we’d kind of lost our focus a little bit.
“We’d come away from what we are and we were very relaxed, which is great, but we didn’t have that killer edge, that eye of the tiger so to speak.
“The game was always going to be that way last night. It was going to be a full house, it’s quite a tight pitch, they were going to make it difficult for us.
“They did their best to give us the game as well – they gave us three goals more or less – and we still found a way to somehow lose it in extra time.
“That is unacceptable. The players understand that, I understand that. We have to be better.”
Evatt has already experienced real highs and lows in his relatively short managerial career.
The Bolton boss admits the up-and-down nature of management can be challenging but insists he relishes it.
“It’s football and it’s a really challenging business and you have to be a certain type of character to deal with the highs and the lows,” he said.
“Friday with the win, the weekend was magnificent, and then all of a sudden, someone just bursts your bubble and it’s back to square one again and we have to rebuild and go again.
“It’s just the nature of the beast but I love it and I’m addicted to it. You can call me a weirdo and whatever else you want to call me - I absolutely thrive on it.
“It gives me an opportunity to prove people wrong. We did that last year and we’re ready to do it again this year.”
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