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Wanderers' struggling strikers have been told to keep things simple for the trip to Fleetwood Town.
Ian Evatt remains confident Dion Charles, Jon Dadi Bodvarsson and Co will soon turn around a sticky patch of form in front of goal and has called on his attacking players to go “back to basics” in their approach to Saturday’s game on the Fylde coast.
Goals from open play have been scarce, especially away from home. Only Cheltenham Town have scored fewer than the Whites on the road this season, and Evatt is keen to get some confidence into his attacking players as quickly as possible.
“All we can keep doing is positive reinforcement,” he said. “Just positive messages, showing them scoring goals, getting that feeling of repetition in training – hitting the back of the net.
“I actually think a lot of them are suffering from overthinking at the moment. Dion, for instance, is at his very best when he is instinctive and now he is doing things, thinking about things – whether he should shoot, whether he should pass. Then your judgement becomes clouded and you make the wrong decision.
“For me, I just want him to play on instinct. I want him to run in behind, I want him to be a threat in behind, I want him to hustle and harry defenders as we always does.
“Then I want him to be instinctive in the box, and I think he has come away from that instinctive nature over probably the past couple of months really.”
Charles is Wanderers’ top scorer this season with six goals in all competitions but Evatt feels the Northern Ireland international and his fellow front men have become too reluctant to pull trigger in recent weeks.
“I have just said, ‘let’s just strip it back to basics’. If you were playing with your mates in the street, what would you do?” he said. “You would shoot. So just shoot, it is a numbers game.
“Regardless of what you say, the more shots you have, the likelihood is you are going to score more goals.
“The more times you are in the box, in the right position, the more likely it is you will score more goals. So just play the numbers game lads.
“We ask them obviously to make the best possible decision for the team now. Sometimes that is difficult because there might be someone with an extra pass who is in a better shooting pass than you. But the minute you start layering up and adding all these things in, their judgement becomes clouded and again we are back to square one. So let’s just strip it back.
“Let’s shoot on sight and make sure we are playing the numbers game in terms of shots, crosses, balls in the box, balls in the right areas. Let’s all be on the same page that we know when we are in X, Y or Z position, the ball is going here, here, here and make sure we fill those errors.
“That is what we are doing this week, and hopefully we will see the fruits of that on Saturday.”
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