Home
Ian Evatt is prepared to make “the big decisions” as Wanderers aim to build momentum heading into the busy Christmas period.
The Bolton boss opted to field a strong line-up against Manchester United Under-21s in the Papa Johns Trophy on Tuesday night.
This meant leaving out the likes of Joel Dixon, who had been a regular starter in the competition up to this stage.
The strong selection paid off as the Whites ran out 4-0 winners thanks to goals from Dapo Afolayan, Aaron Morley, Amadou Bakayoko and Conor Bradley.
Evatt says it was important for his side to get Saturday’s last weekend’s late defeat at Shrewsbury out of their system.
“You have to make big decisions as manager and Joel unfortunately had to miss out, as did a few others,” he told The Bolton News.
“We just felt the need to play a really strong team and get Saturday out of our system. That last 10 minutes was hurtful to us all and we wanted to clear our minds of that.
“We are only two games away from Wembley now and I keep saying to the players, when you get chance to play at Wembley it is something you will remember for the rest of your life.
“Of course, we are going to give it our best shot to get there. It is a great day out for the fans. We will give it all we can to make sure we try and get there.”
Evatt was pleased to give the fans something to smile about against United’s youngsters and is eager to build on the performance when Exeter come to town this weekend.
He added: “It is certainly going to put a smile back on our fans’ faces, which is important.
“As I said, I don’t think there was a lot wrong on Saturday. I think it was 10 minutes of madness, or just moments of madness defending set plays.
“We lost our composure, we lost our discipline and we were far too passive in our own box. It can’t be that way, we went low energy.
“When you are trying to defend your box against these types of teams who are physically dominant, you have to be on it.
“You have to be switched on and you have to be super aggressive, and we weren’t that for those two set plays on Saturday.
“It hurt them and it hurt me, and as I said home truths were told on Monday. But the response was excellent and now we are fully focused on Saturday.”
Source