Port Vale 0-3 Bolton

Ian Evatt's match verdict

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Ian Evatt gave new signing Szabolcs Schön a pat on the back after he impressed in Wanderers ’ 3-0 friendly win at Port Vale after just one training session with his new team-mates.

The 23-year-old Hungarian, signed for a reported £800,000 from Fehérvár, was playing for his former club in the Conference League just a few days earlier.

He had a solitary session at Lostock on Friday to prepare for the game at Vale Park but quickly showed his credentials in a comfortable victory.

Aaron Collins, Victor Adeboyejo and Dion Charles scored the goals to give Evatt’s side a confidence boost going into their opening fixture against Leyton Orient next weekend.

But the name on everyone’s lips – quite literally – was new signing Schön.

“We have been calling him Szabi, for short, and I was really pleased because he has come in cold,” the manager explained.

“We know he is a player whose skillset suits what we do. Some of the things we ask of the players are not alien to him and he has just played in Europe on Wednesday, so it isn’t a bad level to be playing at.

“He is a talented kid – and that’s him fresh and cold after one training session. The more detail and information we can give him, I think he will take it all on board.

“Everyone will look at his stature and maybe think it is a frailty or that he might be a little fragile. But you could see there he is nothing like that.

“He has a good leap, he doesn’t shirk aerial duels, in fact I think he won all of his today.

“It isn’t always what you see. There is a really big heart and desire behind the technical aspects he is going to bring to the team as well.”

Wanderers dominated the first half to take a 2-0 lead into the break, extending it through Charles’s neat finish after Vale had enjoyed their best spell of the game.

Evatt was able to use his whole squad and did not appear to pick up any injuries, which puts him in a positive frame of mind with the season curtain raiser now just seven days away.

He said: “There are still lots of things that we can tighten up on and improve upon, but you can see the work we have done in pre-season, with and without the ball, and a large portion of what you saw there was what we have been working on.

“I do want to see more. This is still very new and we are still getting players back, so getting them up to full speed for the season is tough. Gradually they will get progressively better.

“The lads have worked so hard over pre-season and whenever you come here to Port Vale it is a test and a challenge. They have recruited really heavily in the summer and they have got a very strong squad for League Two. I wish Darren (Moore) all the best because he is one of football’s good guys but to play in that manner here, I was very pleased.”

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Port Vale boss Moore identifies 'exceptional' Bolton trait

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Port Vale boss Darren Moore says his side will learn a lot from their friendly against “top opposition” in Wanderers.

The Whites ran out 3-0 winners at Vale Park thanks to goals from Aaron Collins, Victor Adeboyejo and Dion Charles.

Moore insists he wanted the squad to be challenged in pre-season as they prepare for the upcoming campaign League Two.

“A real good runout against top, top opposition,” he told the club channels. “We chose pre-season to be a real tough one and to finish with a game like that was good.

“It was every bit how I thought the game would play out against good opposition who ask questions on and off the ball.

“The boys had a high level workout and would have benefitted from the game, for sure.”

The Valiants were relegated from League One following a 2-0 defeat at the Toughsheet Community Stadium in April and the squad has seen plenty of change over the summer.

When asked what his players will take from the game, Moore added: “Certainly the organisation against good opposition.

“If you are not quite on it, if you don’t quite get your front foot press right, they will find that extra man. I think we will have learnt from that to get it absolutely spot on.

“The speed they moved the ball was exceptional at times, we are talking about playing against a team who are four years in the making.

“Detailed opposition with a goal of trying to win League One next season, so it is no disgrace on the players.

“Sometimes to get the learning and understanding, you have to play in games like that to learn what it feels like and how good you need to be, and my players certainly felt that.

“From a learning perspective and understanding the game, we would have got it in and out of possession.”

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FANS' VIEW: Plenty of positives to take from Vale triumph

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It was a relatively short dash down the M6 and A500 to Burslem to face the Valiants at Vale Park in our last friendly match before the season starts in earnest at Leyton Orient next weekend.

It is believed the match was arranged as part of the deal that brought Will Forrester to Bolton but unfortunately for him, he missed out due to injury.

Vale Park has been the scene of many an epic battle between the clubs, particularly in the 1970s and in more recent times, when we have acquired a reputation for being the team that has relegated them to League Two. Port Vale have swapped the home and away ends, so visiting fans are now in the Bycars Stand, and Wanderers fans were buoyed up with the news of our latest signing, Szarbolcs Schön the previous day - and we were even more delighted when it was announced he was straight in the team.

Ian Evatt started with his strongest available team, giving us an idea of the XI that might start at Orient. Didn’t we look good? I had hardly finished my chicken balti pie, when Scott Arfield and Josh Dacres-Cogley combined to put it on a plate for Aaron Collins. We continued to dominate, passing them off the park, looking more positive in going forward this season. Young Schön was having a great debut, dominating the left wing-back position. He looked like he had been playing for us for months. Victor Adeboyejo scrambled the second goal before half time and Dion Charles wrapped things up by coolly slotting in the third. Even the multiple substitutions didn’t seem to weaken us.

There were a lot of positives to come out of this match. Three of our strikers got on the scoresheet and Arfield is beginning to show his class and know-how. Schön looks like an exciting addition to the squad with all five signings either playing or on the bench, although Chris Forino didn’t come on.

We look to be in good shape for the season ahead but are in for a long, hard battle. Promotion isn’t won in August but a good start can get us on the way. Potentially, we have other signings in the pipeline and several players to come back from injury.

I’m ready for the new season. Come on you Whites.

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BIG MATCH VERDICT: Why Wanderers look revved up for the League One season

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“If you like to gamble, I tell you, I’m your man.”

They tell you not to read too much into friendlies, but they say nothing about the portents supplied by pre-match music, and the words being growled by Burslem’s own Lemmy in Motorhead’s timeless anthem were striking a power chord.

Wanderers continue to play a game of poker in the last month of the transfer window, holding their nerve under pressure to secure the last few signings that Ian Evatt believes can turn his team from nearly-men to outright winners.

They have already pushed up the ante. If reports in Hungary are to be believed, an investment of circa £800,000 was made in wing-back Szabi Schön, who made his debut at Vale Park with just one training session under his belt and having played in the Conference League on Wednesday night.

That makes the one-time Ajax youth player the most expensive player bought by the club in more than a decade, surpassing the fee paid to Bristol Rovers for Aaron Collins in January. High stakes indeed for a third-tier club, and the chances are the spending has not finished yet.

Evatt remains locked in a battle to sign a new number 10, refusing to go beyond his valuation for targets like Luton Town’s John McAtee or Brest’s Karamoko Dembele; with other high rollers sitting around the table, that strategy is a brave one indeed.

Even the way Wanderers have tweaked their tactics this summer has ramped up the risk element. If Wembley heaped pressure on the manager to evolve his side tactically, then Evatt has leaned unashamedly into his attacking instincts – this team now boasting three forward players looking to hunt down the ball higher up the pitch and more aggressively than ever before.

“Double up or quit, double stake or split.”

New boy Schön looks like he will fit right in with this heavy metal approach. The diminutive Hungarian has played a lot of his career on the left wing and looked to run his full-back at every opportunity but it was his defensive work that caught the eye, chasing back to help out Jack Iredale, clattering into challenges with satisfying bite and winning a surprising amount in the air.

While true, the quality of his final ball was a touch inconsistent on the day, his presence as an outlet on the left gave Bolton an attacking balance they have struggled for since returning in the summer.

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To this point, Wanderers have leaned heavily on Josh Dacres-Cogley to provide width, and his impressive run during pre-season continued with a fine cross to create the opening goal for Aaron Collins just two minutes in.

Vale keeper Connor Ripley made a fine save at close range from Scott Arfield to temporarily prevent Bolton from doubling their lead, something Victor Adeboyejo eventually achieved with a scrambled effort towards the end of the first half.

League Two Vale have made a cluster of new signings this summer after relegation, and Darren Moore’s side struggled for continuity until after half time when Ben Garrity flashed a shot just wide and big Swiss striker Lorent Tolaj started to make a mark.

Bolton absorbed the pressure and revved their passing machine back into life – George Thomason, Josh Sheehan and Arfield revelling in the one-touch fun of it all. Whether it can work in the November mud at Edgeley Park, who knows, but in shirt-sleeve weather in Staffordshire, some of the patterns were great to watch.

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Adeboyejo had played point in the Bolton attack and has probably done enough to start at Leyton Orient next week. The former Barnsley man was one of several players who had last season disrupted by injury, never quite getting back to his best in the final few months, but he has been one of Bolton’s brightest players of pre-season and caused Vale no end of issues.

Dion Charles replaced Adeboyejo for the last half an hour as his bid for full fitness continued. It was a pleasing sight indeed to see the Northern Ireland international sprint off the shoulder of marker Jesse Debrah and cooly slip the ball under Ripley to score the third.

You win some, lose some, it’s all the same in pre-season, or something to that effect. But the reality is that Wanderers needed to sign off on a positive note as they now begin their build-up to Saturday evening in East London.

Evatt knows full well that last season’s disappointment still lingers, if not in his own dressing room, then certainly on the terraces. And the importance of a good start to the season cannot be underestimated, lest the negativity be allowed to creep in again.

The Bolton boss knows he still has some work to do on the transfer front. Though the signing of Schön looks, at first glance at least, to be a move in the right direction, Wanderers need to prove they can compete outside of the ‘frees and loans’ market and get deals done. Evatt also must ensure his whole squad are on board with a spikier, more forceful brand of football than he has employed in his four years at the helm, which has not been an easy task with so many minor injuries racking up over the last few weeks.

Just a quarter of clubs who have ever been beaten in the play-off final bounce back to win promotion by any means the following year. Those are the type of odds Bolton will have to beat if they are to return to the Championship, and plenty would wish to see them fail.

But he favourites tag has never sat well with Evatt’s group, they have often needed something to push against, some difficulty to overcome, and that is why it would be unwise to write them off.

This is a team with focus. And where better to prove that than Leyton Orient, scene of that gloomy January defeat full of wasteful finishing, the first of several New Year body blows that eventually built towards the biggest heartbreak of all.

The time for bluffing is over, it’s time for Wanderers to lay some cards on the table.

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