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Ian Evatt says Wanderers fans have every right to vent their frustrations this week.
The Bolton boss came under fire from away supporters during a bitterly disappointing 3-0 defeat at Fleetwood on Tuesday night.
Wanderers dropped to 16th in the table as a result and now face a short hop across Lancashire to Accrington Stanley this weekend under pressure to produce a response.
Evatt urged Whites fans to take into consideration the team’s injury problems but conceded that the level of performance at Highbury Stadium in midweek had dropped well below the acceptable level.
“I understand their frustration, of course, and if I was sat in there having paid my hard-earned money, I’d be doing the same thing,” he said of the pockets of vocal criticism he received during the game.
“That’s just football and I feel for our supporters because we all want more. I want it just as much as they do, if not more at times.
“But we also have to have some perspective and be realistic and at the minute, when we’re missing a lot of key valuable players. We have some serious consistency problems and we need to be better.”
Evatt has been in a similar situation before at Bolton after last season’s slow start saw them drop to 21st position in League Two before a New Year revival.
He hopes to achieve the same result by strengthening in January but unlike 2020/21, played almost entirely behind closed doors, he is now having to face the brickbats head on.
Nevertheless, the Wanderers boss is confident he and the club will emerge stronger for the experience.
“Look, football is an emotional game and I'm not naive enough to know that I’m not going to get heavy criticism,” he said. “We are all going to take and face heavy criticism, but I am certainly man enough to take it.
“I have been through worse times than this and come out the other side and I have no doubt we will again.
“We are going to have some short term pain and it is going to be turbulent but as a club we need to stick together and as a group of staff and players, we need to stick together and we need to prove some critics wrong.
“We did that last season and I’m sure we can do it again this season.”
Evatt held back on criticising his own players after the Fleetwood game to prevent confidence in the camp from being too badly damaged.
Reflecting on the result, he feels some of his more experienced players will produce the right reaction on Saturday at Accrington.
“I need more from them than that (Fleetwood), certainly,” he said. “But we have just beaten Doncaster 3-0 and Crewe 2-0 and got a draw against Cheltenham and did okay at Wycombe away.
“We have been doing okay but today is just another disaster and we just seem to have one of these in us every now and again and it isn’t right and it’s not acceptable.”
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