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Eoin Doyle’s crisis of confidence in front of goal will not be a lasting issue for Wanderers, claims Ian Evatt.
The Irish striker has failed to score in his last five games and missed some high-profile opportunities in Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday.
Doyle has four goals to his name in all competitions this season, two of which came from the penalty spot, but his recent dry spell has prompted calls for him to be taken out of the starting line-up.
Evatt remains confident the 33-year-old, who scored 19 times last season, will soon be back among the goals.
“If you keep putting good players in the right positions then, eventually, they will go in, and that is what we will keep doing,” he told The Bolton News.
“It is not just down to Eoin, is it? It is down to the whole team. Other people have had opportunities and chances and not taken them so we will keep building him up, giving him confidence.”
Doyle has started all 12 of Wanderers’ league games this season but now finds his place in the side challenged by the fit-again Amadou Bakayoko.
He has only once before gone five league games without scoring for Bolton, in a run which saw blanks against Cheltenham, Tranmere, Carlisle, Crawley and Exeter midway through last season.
Only MK Dons have scored more goals in League One this season – but Evatt’s side have experienced five blanks in 12 outings, putting extra pressure on their attacking talisman, Doyle.
“Even the best players suffer some confidence, suffer from lean runs of form, but we’ll support him and we’ll back him and eventually he’ll start scoring,” Evatt said.
“But it wasn’t just Eoin’s chances, there were multiple. We can sit here and name five or six gilt-edged opportunities that we didn’t take (at Sheffield Wednesday).
“Obviously he had that one early on, which could have been pivotal to the game and obviously changed their supporters’ mood, but even though they were winning the game, you could hear the supporters’ mood because they were hanging on for dear life and again that’s credit to my players.”
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