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Wanderers will be prepared for all eventualities when the January transfer window comes along.
The club had been preparing to make relatively few changes in the New Year but Ian Evatt admits that plan could still change with a little under eight weeks remaining until business can be done again.
Wing-back Conor Bradley being recalled to parent club Liverpool and loaned back out to the Championship is just one of the unknown quantities the Bolton boss and his technical performance director Chris Markham are weighing up at this stage.
Wanderers are still very hopeful that the Northern Ireland international will remain at the University of Bolton for the full season, having made an excellent start, but the club want to make sure they are well covered if the Premier League club decide otherwise.
Last month’s inconsistent form also threw up different issues for Evatt to consider but his main focus is on making sure Wanderers are within the play-off picture at the end of the festive schedule.
“October has felt like a lifetime,” he joked. “But we are still two months away from the January window, so we know a lot of things can change in that time.
“We know where we want to be this season and, hopefully, we are going to be in a position in January where we haven’t got as much ground to make up, as we have in the last couple of years.
“But we are always looking to improve and if seven players became available that I think could all make a significant difference to us and they all came under our financial remit, then we would probably do it.”
Evatt has made wholesale changes to his squad in the previous two January windows out of necessity and is pleased to say that, as things stand, such extensive measures will not be needed.
“We are in a much better position now, with where the squad is,” he said. “It is a lot more even and a lot stronger than it was, so I don’t believe there is significant squad maintenance to take place in January, but we are always looking to improve.
“We’ll just see. There are lots of conversations happening behind the scenes between myself and Chris (Markham) about what it looks like and what we might need and we’ll how that progresses over the next couple of months.” Wanderers have announced that their December 17 home game with Exeter City has been designated a Family Day, with tickets reduced to £10 for adults and £5 for Under-18s and Over-65s.
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