Evatt on fans' expectation and owners' backing

IAN Evatt believes he has the full backing of Wanderers’ owners to continue the job he has started.

Faced with mounting questions about the club’s poor start to the campaign, the Whites head coach admits bedding down more than 20 summer signings in a new style of play will take longer than first expected.

Promotion talk was rife in the summer and Evatt wants his players to continue to aim high even after registering just two wins from the first 11 games.

But he has also urged supporters to be realistic about the money spent in the summer and how the mass turnover of players has affected the early season form.

Asked whether Bolton’s owners, Football Ventures, shared his view, he told The Bolton News: “Myself and the ownership group are very, very close and tight. They have invested in me and see a lot of good in me, which is great. I have their trust and their backing.

“I will do all I can to make sure I repay that faith, simple as that.

“They understand the project, they understand the journey.

“We all want success because this club does deserve it more than most with what it has been through but a sense of perspective – we are not spending three, four, five or six million pounds. We’re under the salary cap and to put that figure into perspective, it would be a bottom six League Two budget last season.

“That isn’t because the owners won’t spend it, it is because there is a salary cap and the fact we want this club to be sustainable. We don’t want this club to be in a mess, as we were, in the future.

“That’s brilliant because we couldn’t ask for a better group of owners. We couldn’t ask for a better chairman. And I am not saying that because I am the manager, I am saying it because they are the best people I have met. That’s the truth.

“I am impatient. I want to win. I am used to winning games. But it’s going to take time and I know that isn’t what the fans want to hear but it is the truth and I have always said I’d be honest with them.”

Expectations were unquestionably raised during the summer months after Evatt’s arrival when eye-catching signings like Eoin Doyle and Antoni Sarcevic helped convince bookmakers to install Wanderers as the title favourites.

Those lofty targets were hardly played down inside the camp, either, but asked whether those predictions of silverware did the team any favours in the longer term, Evatt added: “We can say that – but you have to. What’s the point in being in a division or a competition if you not trying to win it?

“If you don’t want to be, or think you can be the best, then what’s the point in turning up?

“What is the point in running in a race if you think you are going to finish last? There isn’t one.

“You should want to win everything you do and sometimes it’s mental messaging. I want the players to start believing that because they don’t at the minute.

“To be the best, to be a good team, to be a top individual you have to believe you are good at what you do. And they are lacking in confidence and belief. So mental messaging suggests you should reinforce the positivity to make them want and feel that. Too many don’t at the moment.”

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I’m sure the owners expectations were greater than sitting near the foot of the L2 table. In fact, when they got involved with BWFC I’m sure they had a Championship club in mind. I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were Evatt. He should get that defence and goalkeeper shit show sorted fast if he wants to stay in the job.

I've said this on another thread but Evatt did state he was targeting promotion at the start of the season. Surely with 20+ new players you'd think he'd be a bit more conservative with what he announced to the press and he now finds himself having to roll out excuses about number of players and budget.

Norpig wrote:I've said this on another thread but Evatt did state he was targeting promotion at the start of the season. Surely with 20+ new players you'd think he'd be a bit more conservative with what he announced to the press and he now finds himself having to roll out excuses about number of players and budget.

Agreed, he's been a bit naive and has probably had a major wakeup call. Think we can probably put that down to inexperience, he's only 38 after all.

We signed the divisions best goal scorer and the divisions best midfielder and arguably re-signed our best player from last season.  FV also paid big money for us to sign Evatt who had stormed the league below us last season with a team playing Barcelona type football, so I think everybody had high hopes for this season and I don't think it was unrealistic to think we would have done far better than we have achieved so far, so I think talk about aiming high, going for promotion, and what other ambitious things that were said at the time by him (and the rest of us all) were not unrealistic things to be saying and certainly lifted the rain clouds that had been pissing all over the club from the moment poor Eddie passed away.

Certain helped shift a mountain of ST's on the back of the euphoria and gave us all hopes and expectations for the future.

That wasn't a bad thing at the time really was it?

Ok it's not gone to plan and shortcomings exposed which I guess was always going to happen in some degree but I do think it is somewhat fickle for the fans/social media to turn on him for being optimistic about our future when they and the rest of us did also.

Clearly it is going to be a harder task than we all expected (including Evatt as well no doubt) but it should not be beyond him finding a way to utilise Doyle and Sarcevic to fire us high up the table even now.

Onwards and upwards and all that!

I never shared in the bookies optimism or Evatts to be honest. Doyle and Sarcevic were good signings but the rest were a mixture of out of contract league 2 players and players from non league. I still bought a season ticket and probably will continue to until i physically can't get to the stadium as its in the blood so it didn't affect my thinking.

I really hope he can recreate what he did at Barrow. We've had years of going the wrong way and financial issues so it would be nice to finally have something to look forward to but at the moment it's just more of the same. 

There is no excitement when i log in to ifollow to watch us just a sense of dread and resignation. I just hope and pray we can steady the ship this season and look to push on in the next one.