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Wanderers must give some leeway to their younger players undergoing spells of inconsistent form, says Ian Evatt.
The Bolton boss has high hopes for the likes of George Thomason, Aaron Morley and loanees Conor Bradley and James Trafford – but he is also mindful of heaping too much pressure on young shoulders.
Thomason shone brightly early in the campaign but has recently been taken out of the Whites’ starting 11 after a brief dip in form, and Morley has also found starts harder to come by in the last few weeks.
Evatt believes a degree of inconsistency is only to be expected with some of the less experienced members of his squad.
“George was exceptional for four or five games, then had a dip, but we must remember he is only 21 years old,” he told The Bolton News.
“Aaron Morley is 22, Conor Bradley is 19, James Trafford has just turned 20. We have some young players that are going to have dips, that happens, so they need absolutely everybody’s support.
“They need my support first and foremost, but they need the football club and the fans’ support on a wider scale to keep them going because making your way and being consistent as a young football player is really tough and challenging at times.
“We will cut them a bit of slack when they don’t do quite so well and make sure we support them, but we know what we’ve got.
“I think we’ve got some very good players, and those four or five that I mentioned there are certainly some of them.”
On four occasions this season, Wanderers have named a side with an average age of less than 25 years – including games against Port Vale, Wycombe, Sheffield Wednesday and Burton.
Lincoln City have named five of the 10 youngest starting line-ups this season in League One, the youngest in a 6-3 away win at Bristol Rovers being exactly 23 years.
According to Transfermrkt.com, the Wanderers team that took the field against Barnsley in the FA Cup on Saturday had an average age of 25.3 years and the oldest average age of a line-up this season – named against Accrington Stanley last month - was 27.2 years.
Evatt is also upbeat about Josh Sheehan’s future, following his return from a serious knee injury.
The Welsh midfielder came back into the team against Oxford on October 29 in what was his first league start for nearly a year.
Evatt is backing the former Newport County playmaker to become an important part of the side – and like the younger players in his squad, is willing to let Sheehan find his way back to best form at his own pace.
“We hope he can in time become a pivotal player for us,” he said. “We think Josh is a really good player, we think he’s really talented.
“It was a difficult game to be thrown into against Oxford, but we felt he was ready. Did he perform as well as he’d like? Probably not, but we have to cut him some slack. He has been out a long time and the way this team has evolved, even since he joined the club and how much improvement there has been, it has been huge.
“We need to give him some time, he was out for a long time, we have still got lots of games left and he will be a key player in some of those games, no doubt about that.”
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