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Wanderers have been helping their strikers tune-up with a few novel motivational techniques.
Ian Evatt revealed he has tried to keep spirits up among his front men by issuing them with video highlight montages, set to up-tempo music, via the club’s in-house mobile app.
And the plan worked, with Amadou Bakayoko and Jon Dadi Bodvarsson returning to the scoresheet against Burton Albion in Tuesday night’s 2-1 win, which put Bolton fifth in the table.
“It was massive to see them scoring again,” Evatt said. “I have been working really hard behind the scenes to try and keep them confident. This is such a big club, everyone has huge expectations and we do more than anybody, and I try and tell the players to stay off the socials as much as possible because football’s an emotional game.
“In one minute, you can be a hero, the next time you can be a villain. But I’m just trying to keep them focused and confident. We’ve been sending them videos of them scoring goals, highlight videos with music in the background, motivational to keep them believing and they’ve all suffered with a bit of belief.
“Dion is probably going through that spell at the moment, but we’ll stick with them and we believe in them. I keep saying that and tonight they’ve repaid the faith.”
There has been no shortage of emotion in Wanderers’ last two games but Evatt returned to the training ground yesterday hoping to settle things down for the build up to this weekend’s game against Oxford United.
The Bolton boss accepts his team has plenty of scope for improvement despite sitting comfortably in the play-off places, not least with their goal return.
And he has asked that fans try to stay behind the club as they did at the UniBol on Tuesday night as the Whites try to maintain their promotion chase.
“They don’t give up so just stick with us,” he said. “We are doing the best we can, we are going to win games, we’re going to lose them. It’s the nature of football seasons.
“We are going to win games we shouldn’t, we’re going to lose games that we’re predicted to win. It is just how football seasons evolve and change and you have to keep yourself pretty even stevens and level and not get too high with the high moments or low with the low ones.
“Sometimes it is closing those four walls around us and keeping that belief and sometimes we can share magical moments like the comeback on Saturday and again tonight. But I believe in this group of players. I hope the fanbase does, everything that I see tonight is they very much do and hopefully we’ll give them a good season.
“There’s a long way to go. 15 games gone and loads more improvement to come but I’m really pleased with the way we’ve showed absolute huge amounts of character the last two games to win from where we were in those games.”
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