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Wanderers won’t be offered any let-up in the blazing temperatures forecast for Bolton this week.
Disappointed by his team’s display in their penultimate pre-season friendly against Carlisle United on Saturday, manager Ian Evatt says he will not be letting his players off with any hard graft on the training ground.
Though the heatwave is expected to push thermometers up past 30 degrees, Evatt made it clear that standards cannot be allowed to slip as they did in Cumbria.
“We won’t tailor anything because of the heat, they lost that right today,” he said after the final whistle.
“So they will be training properly, they will be training fully and they will be training intensely.
“We are professionals. We are here to work, we are here to train hard and we will be working a normal working week.”
Even though Evatt was upset that his players had allowed a set of positive pre-season performances slip, he believes the result offers a timely mental test for his players.
Though no concessions will be made at Lostock this week, he will be looking closely at the players who react to the result in the right way.
“Things aren’t won or lost (at Carlisle) and there are no points given but there are learnings to be gained and I think we have learned our lessons today. It is probably good that it has happened.
“In the pre-season games, you don’t want things always going for you and everything to be sweetness and light because that is not what happens in football seasons. You lose games, you have bad moments and bad spells in games.
“It is about how you react and drag yourselves out of that hole that you find yourselves in.
“We have a good week now, nothing lost, lots learned, but we need to make sure we are ready for Huddersfield on Saturday.”
Evatt has also confirmed that Gethin Jones missed the game against his former club because of a minor knee injury.
“It is a slight injury he got in training on Thursday,” the manager explained. “It is similar to the one Baka (Amadou Bakayoko) got, really.
“In the first instance we thought it was really quite a bad one with his knee, and there is a little bit of swelling, but we have had it scanned and there is only a slight grade one sprain, so it’s really good news.
“These things happen in training and contact sports and we’re looking forward hopefully to it settling really well and Gethin being available for Saturday. I think there is a good chance.”
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