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Ian Evatt has called on Wanderers fans to help ensure home advantage counts in Saturday’s crunch clash with Ipswich Town.
Unbeaten at the UniBol since October, Bolton’s form on their own soil has been the bedrock of their promotion push so far.
Only Sheffield Wednesday and Plymouth have taken more home points than the Whites in League One but as his side looks to extend their impressive run against the third-placed Tractor Boys, Evatt has called on every supporter to be at their partisan best.
“One of the things we pride ourselves on at the moment is that we have turned the place into a fortress. It can be an intense and intimidating atmosphere and the way we play can be intimidating and imposing as well,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter whether we are playing against first, second, third or bottom of the division, we have the same mantra, we want to pin teams back and dominate. We want to work harder than the opposition, that’s free and that’s a given, but then we want to make our quality shine through.
“This is a tough place to come now. It hasn’t always felt that way, and maybe teams used to come here for a good day out with excellent facilities in my early days here, but now that has changed.
“We want to play football to entertain the fans, and I think this will be a good game to watch. But we will need them to give us everything as well to get the result we want.”
Wanderers face Ipswich and league leaders Sheffield Wednesday over the next seven days before building up to the Papa Johns final against Plymouth on April 2.
Buoyed by the return of Victor Adeboyejo and Cameron Jerome to his attack, Evatt believes his side are in a positive frame of mind despite two recent hiccups against Portsmouth and Morecambe.
“The next three games represent as big a test as you could possibly have – first, second and third in the table but what exciting games to be involved in,” he told The Bolton News.
“It is a brilliant challenge to go and express ourselves. I say it loads but pressure is a privilege and if you had asked every Bolton fan if with 10 games to go you would be in the play-offs by six points and be in a cup final at Wembley, they would have snapped your hand off.
“Let’s enjoy that we are in the mix at the business end of the season.”
Ipswich are one of the form teams in the division, having won their last four, and still have designs on automatic promotion. Evatt maintains there will be twists and turns to come.
“I know Kieran, Ipswich and people within that club respect what we do. The feeling is mutual but come three o’clock on Saturday it goes out of the window and it’ll be two teams going all out to win a game,” he said.
“Ipswich are flying high, have had some good results at home, but prior to that they had a couple of sticky ones, especially away from home.
“That is just how football is. If you judge yourself week to week, or game to game, you’ll drive yourself nuts. You can only try and keep consistent, try to keep level headed, and know that your end target is. At the moment we are achieving it but there is lots of work ahead if that is to continue.”
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