Bolton reborn as Evatt’s self-belief banishes the gloom
Falling into League Two following years of financial pain, a dramatic upturn since January has the club chasing promotion
In September, things were looking bleak for Bolton Wanderers. Five consecutive defeats at the start of the League Two season had dispatched them to their lowest league position in 132 years of distinguished history. Here were the club who, in 2008, were ranked the 47th-best in Europe (Manchester City were 86th and Borussia Dortmund 109th), seemingly on course for the National League.
The sad thing was: nobody could be surprised. An asset-stripping owner had projected them to the lip of destruction. Players went unpaid for months, administration was a more frequent occurrence than victories. At one point, the manager had to pull them out of a league fixture because he had only four senior pros available. In the summer of 2019 they came to within a day of going out of business altogether.
And the hangover fromthat time lingered: when the pandemic curtailed the League One season last March, Bolton were 21 points from safety; relegation was a formality. Worse, the new League Two season did not immediately suggest an imminent turnaround. Faced with not so much a blank canvas as a patch of scorched earth, the new manager,
Ian Evatt – recruited from the National League champions Barrow – had been obliged to build an entire new squad, one who were soon floundering.
“This is a big ship to turn around,” Evatt says. “It was a strange, challenging start. But if I’m honest, the recruitment we did in the summer wasn’t good enough.”
He is being tactful; when Evatt arrived, transfers were not his domain. They were conducted by the director of football, Tobias Phoenix. And, according to Ian Bridge, secretary of the Bolton Wanderers Supporters’ Trust, several of the players Phoenix brought in were “not fit for purpose”. Evatt, trying to institute the ball-playing style that saw his previous team dubbed “Barrowcelona” faced an uphill struggle.
“It probably helped us in those early days playing behind closed doors,”
Evatt says. “Not having the fans there took some pressure off. It gave us time to get our act together.” And the act started to come together when Evatt took control of recruitment after Phoenix left. In January, he made a pair of critical signings: midfielders Kieran Lee and MJ Williams.
“Kieran should be playing at a much higher level,” Evatt says of a player who had spent the previous eight years at Sheffield Wednesday. “We were able to sign him because he was out of contract because clubs are struggling to keep big squads together in the pandemic. Covid has brought a tight money situation. But also there are opportunities.”
The other thing Evatt did was replace his young goalkeeper Billy Crellin with the veteran former Blackpool player Matt Gilks, who was on his coaching staff.
It was a particularly tough decision as, in October, the manager had been obliged to apologise to the youngster after publicly telling him to “man up” after a mistake-littered performance. But it proved a wise move, as Gilks’s experience has proved a sizeable boon.
“He is so vocal,” says Evatt of his goalkeeper. “His organisation on the pitch has been a huge part of our turnaround.”
And what a turnaround it has been. Since Bolton beat Leyton Orient on Jan 30, they have won nine of their past 11 games, moving from 19th in the table to fifth. Now, with 10 games to go, the talk around the University of Bolton Stadium is of promotion. It is some change.
“Anybody that knows me will say I’m not a man of self-doubt,” Evatt says. “When things were going badly, it was a case of believing in the process and knowing things will turn. If you are happy to change at the drop of a hat after a bad result, you don’t truly believe in what you are doing.
“The fact I stuck with our methods said to the players this is something to get on board with.”
The fruits are significant. For the first time in an age, Bolton can no longer be described as a crisis club. Management, directors and players are united. After being routinely sneered at by the previous owner, the Supporters’ Trust is in fruitful communication with the new chair, Sharon Brittan. And the fans are flocking back, if not yet in person then to watch games online: Bolton have the fifth highest number of subscribers to the ifollow service in the entire English Football League.
“A football club can only be successful if things are going right on the pitch,” Evatt says. “I know what a successful team can do for a community. We’re seeing that growing here. This is a club that belongs in the Championship at least. But first we have to finish the job in hand. There is still a lot of work to do.”