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Ian Evatt has tried to explain why his Wanderers team produced a “tired” performance against Exeter City just four games into the new League One campaign.
The Bolton boss admitted his team had let the fans down in the 2-0 home defeat but reasoned that most of his players were operating way below their full physical capacity.
Eoin Toal missed the game with a muscle tear which will keep him out for a couple of weeks, Scott Arfield also pulled out of the squad with a hamstring problem, and Evatt named youngsters Sonny Sharples-Ahmed and Luke Matheson on the bench to fill his squad on Saturday.
The Whites dropped to 18th in the table – their lowest league position since late 2021 – but the manager has attempted to offer some explanation for the slump.
“You have to look at the context,” he said. “Players we have signed haven’t had full pre-seasons because they have been waiting to exit and we have been reliant on the parent club making those calls on when they can leave.
“We have had players who have missed pre-season because of injuries, players who have missed games because they were injured last season, there are very few who are 100 per cent today.
“We have kids on the bench because of numbers but you can’t just keep recruiting players, we have got 24 now and there is space for one more.
“We have to accept the fact we are missing a big portion of our team and that we’ll get them back at the end of the next international break. We have to use this one as a reset and to go again.”
Much was made of the potential for a ‘hangover’ after Wanderers’ play-off final defeat to Oxford United back in May and despite some bright spots in the Carabao Cup, performances have not yet hit the expected heights in the league.
Things were better at Shrewsbury in midweek as a third round game at Arsenal was secured but Evatt, whose side travel to Barrow on Tuesday night in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy, says it has been difficult to select a fully fit squad.
“It is easy to get into a negative mood with how we ended last season and how we started this one,” Evatt said. “It is not where we want to be but we’re five or six points off that, which we could do in two games, which at the moment is OK. We can’t keep doing that, though, you need to change it and start building some results.
“It’s disappointing that we couldn’t build on what we’d done on Tuesday but these players can’t go again. We can’t keep picking the same players that haven’t played a great deal of football, especially when Tuesday comes around the corner and people will say to me that we should change the team and just play the kids, we can’t, there are rules for the competition.
“Some players have to play on Tuesday because I have no choice. If I had played them today then they would have played three times in a week when they hadn’t played a great deal of football and we’d end up breaking them or losing them. Let’s just swallow the pain.
“There is no excuse, the team we picked was good enough to win that game but we didn’t.”
Evatt made a triple substitution after going 2-0 down and admitted he had considered making the changes at half time.
He added: “I decided to give the players 10 minutes after half time and the first thing we did was lose two duels, give away a corner and concede. There was a mountain to climb after that.
“They had one shot on target other than the two set plays, the goals, and we have had three out of 19, which for our level of forward players is not good enough.”
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