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Wanderers’ fans will play a crucial role in the last seven home games of he season, says Ian Evatt.
While travelling supporters got a treat at Peterborough on Saturday, season ticket holders at the University of Bolton Stadium have also had plenty of value for money – with Bolton boasting the second-best points return of any club in League One.
You have to go back to December 2 for the last time the Whites even conceded a goal on home soil, and Evatt hopes that kind of form can inspire supporters to create a louder, more hostile atmosphere to push his side on for the remaining three months.
With attendances still going strong, the Bolton boss hopes to convert the positive vibes echoing around the club into decibels on the terraces.
“They (the fans) have a massive role to play in all this,” he told The Bolton News. “Second half against Forest Green, last 20 minutes against Cheltenham, if we could replicate that sort of atmosphere for 90 minutes it would be such an intimidating place.
“The players must play a part. They need to get fans’ bums off their seats. We want to do that – but I’d love the fans to walk in there for the last six or seven home games and do everything they can to make it a partisan atmosphere. It will take it such a difficult place to come.”
While Saturday’s result may rival the home win against Sunderland or the one that clinched promotion against Crawley as Evatt’s most celebrated in his two-and-a-half years at Bolton, the manager remains insistent that the best times are yet to come.
“I just think the whole place, the connection between the team, the staff, the board, the fans, the media team, you guys, it is palpable, you can feel it,” he said. “There is something special about the atmosphere we have created, not just within the club, but about the town as well. The whole place feels positive at the moment and I have said before, if we stick together then good things can happen.
“There was no better moment than after the game on Saturday to highlight just how much togetherness there is in this group.
“The exciting thing for me is that I think there is a lot more to come. Not just in regards to Saturday, although looking at that game without any of the emotion, I do think we can improve.
“The challenge for us now is to reset. That was a real high, but the thing we are trying to do here is stay consistent with our behaviour through the good times and bad. I think we are improving at that.
“Just this morning I’d had a conversation and it doesn’t seem five minutes since Christmas but now we are in mid-February. The second half of the season just seems to fly by.
“I am excited because we have given ourselves an opportunity. I am not counting any chickens, I know there is hard work to come, but to be involved in big games and to be talked about as a team that is challenging and making people sit up and take notice, that is really pleasing.
“The key word has always been progression and that is what we have done this season.”
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