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After a season of remarkable progression at Wanderers, George Thomason set an even higher bar with his performance against Luton Town.
The midfielder, who turned 23 last week, helped Bolton go toe-to-toe with their Premier League opponents with what some believe was his best 90 minutes for the club.
Ian Evatt couldn’t disagree, admitting that the player he gave a league debut to just over three years ago is confounding even his own expectations.
“Sometimes even I get surprised by his development,” he told The Bolton News. “I have said before he is a proper throwback.
“He is a character, he is becoming a real leader, and I think leadership among young players is kind of exiting the game. But he is one of those who drives standards on a daily basis.
“He lives 24/7 for football and because of that hard work he has developed in the way he has. I am proud to have him at our football club and I think we will continue to see him develop.”
Thomason was subject to interest from Bristol City in the summer, a saga which ended with the Championship club having a £1million bid accepted but the player turning down the move.
Since then he has become a first choice pick for Evatt making 31 appearances in all competitions so far and scoring three times.
Asked if he was concerned that higher bids could emerge this month after Thomason’s performances in the cup, the Bolton boss smiled: “My phone is off from now until February 1!”
“We have some assets on the pitch now and it is exactly what we wanted to do when I took the reins four years ago, build a squad and improve people and players. George definitely comes into that category but there are others as well, I am really happy with the way our squad is developing.”
Wanderers got plenty of plaudits for their performance in the two cup games against Luton but Evatt wants to see that transferred on a weekly basis in League One.
The Whites resume their league program in fourth place but with three games in hand on leaders Portsmouth, who are currently just two points ahead of them.
“We know what we have got in the team, I know what they are capable of doing because I see it on a daily basis, we just need consistency,” he said.
“I think the level they can achieve is even better than we saw there (against Luton), so that is our ambition, really. You have to strive for improvement, stay humble, stay hungry, work hard on the training pitch, and the more we can replicate that type of performance the better chance we have of achieving what we want to achieve.”
Over the last 10 games Wanderers have used 16 different players – which alongside Northampton, Peterborough United and Portsmouth is the lowest in the division.
Evatt remains confident that his relatively compact squad can cope with the challenges ahead, and he says the performance against Luton Town shows his players now have a stronger mentality than ever before.
“There is no fear, that is what was most pleasing for me,” he said.
“Sometimes when we have played big games, as you know, part of our development has been managing that big occasion better.
“We did that down at Luton really well and we did it again there. It is improvement, progression, but we want more and we will keep working hard to make that happen.”
Former Wanderers skipper and new Kidderminster Harriers boss Phil Brown believes Evatt’s biggest success this season has been establishing a workable rotation system within his squad.
“I think he is doing brilliantly and he has managed the expectation levels of the supporters, which has been so important,” he said on BBC Radio Manchester. “Manging a group of players who are winning week in week out is fairly easy, it is only when you start losing games that people knock on your door and ask why they are not in the side.
“But these days you don’t get dropped, you get rotated. We talk about it at Manchester City all the time, a player gets rotated because they are better suited to the next game.
“And Ian Evatt has done that at Bolton, he has been consistent with that rotation. We often ask what is his strongest team and when we went down to Portsmouth and he picked Jon Dadi Bodvarsson, I thought ‘is that the front two he really fancies then?’ But the next week he was dropped because he felt someone else was right for that game.
“His messaging has been consistent, and he has been fair to everybody.”
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