Bolton Wanderers: Ian Evatt is worryingly contradicting his 2024/25 promise: View | OneFootball

Both on and off the pitch, there are no signs that Ian Evatt is becoming more tactically flexible, as he has suggested was needed this season.

In the aftermath of Bolton Wanderers’ 2-0 defeat to Oxford United in the League One play-off final at Wembley Stadium back in mid-May, there was an awful lot of disgruntlement from Wanderers supporters after they had blown two, - one through the automatics and then one through the play-offs - great chances to get back into the second-tier.

Supporters remain grateful for their club still being alive after a tumultuous decade or so in which they went into administration and nearly liquidated on more than one occasion, but patience had begun to wear thin a couple of months ago and will be thinner if things start slowly this season.

After around a month and a week or so without saying a word, Ian Evatt finally discussed the need and desire for Bolton to be more tactically flexible this season in order to get over the line.

As he discussed a lot last season, the aim was promotion, so last season can only be categorised as a failure. That said, to miss out on a top two spot on the final day of the campaign would suggest that not everything they did was wrong.

However, Evatt, as he acknowledges, will know that there is a real need to be able to shift things up and avoid being in a scenario where his only tactical solution is to substitute his Player of the Year, Josh Sheehan, and top scorer, Dion Charles, with 20 minutes of the season to go – as he did at Wembley.

Despite a promise that there would be a recruitment drive to bring in players that allowed Wanderers to be more tactically flexible, whether with the ball or just with their shape, things are now beginning to move slowly and hit a bit of a halt.

The apparent importance of an Ian Evatt pre-season

In this pre-season campaign, Bolton have been dealing with several injuries to key first-teamers and that has undermined the supposed importance of the training with several players missing out on new information and instruction, as Evatt has said.

The lack of signings, amount of injuries and lack of varied recruitment in recent years mean that Wanderers have very limited tactical options and in the two pre-season friendlies that they have played so far in which the team line-up was announced by the club, both games saw them continue with a back three.

Despite Wanderers gaining automatic promotion out of League Two by ditching the back three for a 4-3-3 in the 2020/21 campaign, Ian Evatt has now played two and a half seasons’ worth of football with the back three in League One after a struggle in the opening few months of the 2021/22 campaign.

Despite Evatt promising that Wanderers would shift their tactical capabilities to become more flexible and find better solutions – perhaps becoming a little more fluid in what system they used rather than exclusively been stuck to the wing-backs, it appears things are going to stay the same.

Evatt has himself suggested it is important for his currently injured players to have taken on information that they have now missed so surely that is the case for supposed targets and signings that are not even in the building and don’t even have a past relationship with the coach and his philosophies.

The slowness of the transfer window and the amount of injuries, combined with Evatt’s seemingly complex and sophisticated, difficult to pick up off the cuff coaching methods would suggest a shift in tactics is now unlikely – or at least something difficult to implement.

Bolton adjusting to the approach of a supposed ideologue

Ian Evatt has discussed in the past how one of his biggest coaching inspirations is Pep Guardiola and the former Barrow boss has discussed his tactical philosophy in detail with the general principles and his ‘non-negotiables’.

That sort of stubbornness and tactical ideology is a brilliant thing generally, because it allows for teams and clubs to build towards something in the long-term and there is always an over-arching ‘greater good’ for want of a better phrase and a belief that the things and processes they are doing are the right things to do – and, in each season, Wanderers have got better and moved on under Evatt so they would be within their rights to stick with that.

However, when, for four years, ‘Plan B’ has been to simply do ‘Plan A’ better, then it becomes difficult to believe or trust that a manager can not necessarily change his ways but at least tweak and adapt – especially when the recent evidence in a desperate situation in a play-off final saw him remain stubborn.

Keeping possession is how Wanderers intend to play, and it is a defensive tactic as much as that seems convoluted. Controlling the opposition as they don’t have the ball but ensuring very few risks are taken.

Well, risks have to be taken this summer both on and off the pitch if Bolton are to go a few steps further than they did last season and that would involve something drastic happening in the market or in Wanderers’ upcoming final pre-season friendlies to suggest those risks will be implemented or at least tried.