Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Sexy football? Bolton hearts beat faster with Evatt than Clooney!
IAN EVATT never dreamed he could win a popularity contest with Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney as the toast of Bolton.
But by the time Clooney’s appearance in an advert with the town’s famous baker, Jonathan Warburton, premieres on TV tonight, Trotters messiah Evatt hopes he will have presided over his own loaf story with a happy ending. If Bolton Wanderers clinch promotion at Crawley today, it will feel like the end of austerity at a famous club who flirted with extinction. Sadly, it is no mystery why they are down in the foothills of League Two, just 13 years after reaching the last 16 of the UEFA Cup and notching three top-eight Premier League finishes.
When it was time to settle the bill for driving around in a Bentley, they didn’t even have enough for the bus fare. But where Warburton hangs up on Clooney (right) as he finishes a slice of toast in the advert for flour power,
BOLTON BOSS IAN EVATT
Evatt is leading Bolton away from the breadline.
The 39-year-old is determined not to take the good times for granted again, and said: “Football has a nasty habit of biting you on the backside when you think you’ve cracked it.
“And Bolton Wanderers should be a shining example to every club in the country of what happens if you don’t make yourselves sustainable.
“This club overspent, and we’ve got luxury all around us because of it, but it very, very nearly went out of business, lost forever.
“What an absolute tragedy that would have been for a founder member of the Football League, steeped in almost 150 years of history – and we were only two days away from losing it. We can’t ever forget that. But we’ve given ourselves a great opportunity to reset and hopefully this season will prove to be the first step back to where we belong.”
Last year
Evatt made his name as a manager by leading
Barrow back into the Football
League after a
48-year absence.
His Bolton team is built on defensive rock Ricardo Santos (left) and a pair of former Blackpool team-mates from the heyday of Ian Holloway’s Tangerine dreams by the seaside, Alex
Baptiste and veteran goalkeeper Matt Gilks. A last-gasp home defeat by Exeter last weekend (Gethin Jones celebrates his opener for Bolton, below) left the champagne on ice, but Evatt is still just 90 minutes from a second promotion in as many seasons. He added: “This was a brand new team last summer, playing a brand new way. We had to recruit more or less another team in January and we’ve managed to hit the ground running. “I was lucky enough to win several promotions as a player, and to chalk up one early as a manager, and it feels good. Once you’re up, nobody can take those memories away from you. “In 20 years’ time, I want our fans and these players to look back at the day Bolton got promoted during a pandemic and be proud of the achievement.”
Hopefully, this season will prove to be the first step back to where we really belong