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Ian Evatt was pleased to see Wanderers hit the goal trail once again in the Papa Johns Trophy – and remains confident it will translate to League One.
After rattling three goals past Leeds United’s Under-21s on Tuesday night the Bolton boss turns his thoughts to an away game at Accrington Stanley this weekend.
Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, Amadou Bakayoko and Kieran Sadlier all found the back of the net as the Whites ended a mini-drought of three games without scoring, during which Evatt felt there was still plenty in his side’s performances from which to draw encouragement.
“I think it’s easy to speak about goals,” he said. “It’s not like we’re not creating and a lots has been made out of it.
“I think I saw a stat about the club’s defensive record, that isn’t because we sit men behind the ball and we sacrifice possession. We are controlling games with the ball.
"Our pressing strategy is very good and we have improved our possession, no doubt, and when you manage the ball and you manage transitions, you keep clean sheets and we are going that back to front really well.
“It is just we need to piece it all together now and these strikers are the same ones from the second half of last season that scored the second most goals in the division.
“They haven’t changed, we just need to back them and believe in them and eventually they’ll start hitting form, catching fire and from then on if we can keep that defensive piece going, then we’re going to be a good team.”
Evatt agrees, however, that having some of his attacking players score in midweek will be beneficial to confidence as they go back into action in League One.
“That hitting the back of the net is a good feeling,” he said. “I think strikers want that feeling and they’ve taken it on themselves and taken it personally that people are criticising them, as they should, but we have a huge amount of belief in them.
“They don’t become poor strikers overnight, they’ve had a bad week, that’s it, before that we were doing really well. I think we did a lot right on Saturday, completely dominated the game and at Forest Green second half, we did a lot right as well. It’s just about those moments and we took those tonight.”
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