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Ian Evatt maintains that he has enough support in and outside the boardroom to continue fighting on as Bolton Wanderers boss.
Speculation over the manager’s job security ran rife after the 4-0 hammering against Huddersfield Town last Saturday, which left the Whites in the League One relegation zone after five games.
Evatt refuses to accept that the end of his four years in charge is a fait accompli, however, and as his team prepare to host Reading this weekend he is confident he has the backing to turn things around.
“I don’t think I have lost everybody, I don’t think the club has lost everybody,” he said. “There is a portion of the fanbase that are clearly unhappy and they would say they have every right to be.
“And I am not naïve to think that if we don’t win the next six games that things will change.
“Do I think we are capable of that? Absolutely, probably discounting Arsenal, I don’t think that is quite as realistic. A win is important (against Reading) but a good performance would help enormously as well.”
Evatt struggled to make sense of his own situation in the aftermath of the Huddersfield defeat and sought talks with numerous board members and high-level staff in an attempt to gauge what had been going wrong.
The Bolton boss says that the reaction of the players post-match, and on the training ground at Lostock this week, has given him cause for optimism.
He told The Bolton News: “Sunday was spent talking with the board, open and honest conversations from both sides. We were trying to piece together what has happened and a plan to move forwards.
“As a collective we are in this together, we have always felt this way.
“I said what I had to say to the players immediately after the game in high emotion, you will have sensed that when I came up here.
“When you have been here for so long, had so many good times and worked so hard to get to where we have got, you care. And I genuinely care. I care about the fanbase and the board and I want it so much for them.
“Saturday hurt a lot, what happened post-Saturday hurt a lot. But the players immediately that night messaged me, rang me, same on Sunday, and, yeah, if I felt in any way that I had lost them or they didn’t want to play for me any more or I’d lost the board and all of the fans then I’m not deluded, it would end up in a different discussion.
“But that is not the case. We have lost the last three games, we have suffered, been poor, but we are better than that, we are all better that that and we need to show it.”
Wanderers confirmed the exit of first team coach Matt Craddock yesterday and are also understood to have told George Thomason that he will take the captain’s armband for the foreseeable future from Ricardo Santos.
Evatt declined to comment specifically on the decisions but added: “We are trying to make changes we think will affect the players, because they are the most important people at the moment. They are the ones who have to perform on Saturday.
“Sometimes the dynamic within a staffing group or within the players, you just need to shift it. That is what we have looked at doing, so we will see if we get the response we need.”
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