BACKED NOT SACKED
How manager Evatt has turned Bolton into league promotion material... thanks to patient chairman
LOSING your first five games after being named the bookies’ favourites to win League Two is not the best start to a new job.
But Bolton manager Ian Evatt and probably more importantly Sharon Brittan, the club’s chairman (right), kept their collective nerve.
Fast forward to the business end of the season and the Trotters are on a fantastic run with promotion in their sights.
At one stage Bolton were treading water in 19th place – a far cry from the exhilarating Premier League days under Sam Allardyce.
Social media was beginning to turn on Evatt, who had left Barrow after leading them into the EFL for a huge new challenge.
Eleven wins in the last 14 games has backed up the ambitious 39-year-old’s belief that he could breathe new life into a club which had gone into administration and was 48 hours away from folding.
He said: “I was always confident but it was obviously going to take time.
“It was a start from scratch, a complete reset and rebuild.
“Bolton had paid a fair bit in compensation for me and luckily the board have given me time.
“Losing the first five games was obviously a very poor start.
“I think the recruitment in the summer wasn’t good enough if I’m brutally honest.
“We were also teaching new ideas to a completely new group of players in the middle of a pandemic who can’t socialise, can’t build any relationships or do anything outside the football club because of the strict protocols.
“It takes time to teach players to play a whole new way and with a new identity.”=