Bolton Wanderers should make Ian Evatt retention call on one condition: View | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers reached the League One play-off final only to be beaten 2-0 by an Oxford United side at Wembley Stadium that finished 11 points behind them in the regular season.

Ian Evatt raised doubts over his future a couple of months ago and social media would had you believe that the vast majority of Wanderers supporters would now be happy for the former Barrow boss to step aside with a suggestion he has taken them as far he can.

That view, whilst based on more than just Saturday’s defeat given the fact the Trotters have managed just 11 victories in 29 matches across all competitions since New Year’s Day, would still seem quite shortsighted given the progression of the club in each season he has been at the helm.

From automatic promotion in League Two to ninth, fifth and third placed finishes in League One; Evatt has surely bought himself another crack at getting Bolton into the second-tier.

One thing that even the Evatt backers will agree on, though, is that there has to be more tactical flexibility and it could well be pivotal to deciding his future: switching from the back three.

Ian Evatt needs to be more tactically flexible

Throughout Ian Evatt’s insistence on playing a 3-5-2, there has been a bizarre tendency to swap both strikers for two more ineffective strikers, almost always irrelevant to the actual game state.

A good example that will frustrate Wanderers fans forever would be December 2022, leading 2-1 away at Shrewsbury Town. Dapo Afolayan and Dion Charles were causing the opposition so, so many problems, but Evatt opted to substitute both, bringing on Amadou Bakayoko and Jon Dadi Bodvarsson. It allowed the Shrews’ defence to rest, invited pressure and Bolton lost 3-2. It wasn’t the first or last time that sort of substitution baffled supporters and had its consequences.

Perhaps the denouement for that type of tactical switch happened at Wembley in the play-off final when, with 25 minutes to go, Wanderers made a double change, replacing Dion Charles and Josh Sheehan with Cameron Jerome and Victor Adeboyejo.

So, with less than half an hour of the season to go and needing two goals at least, Wanderers’ top scorer and Player of the Year were both sat on the bench. Hamstrung by an inability to switch the system, Evatt said ‘we needed to change something’ – perhaps, yes, but not that. Never that.

It would be lazy to criticise Evatt for these types of subs without offering an olive branch to the former Blackpool captain as it is he and his coaching staff who have the data and knowledge of when a player is entering the ‘red zone’, so there is leeway at times. However, with 25 minutes left of the season? The so-called ‘red zone’ is surely just not relevant.

Time for Bolton to "grow up"

Ian Evatt, an apparent disciple of Pep Guardiola, has been on record stating that the 4-3-3 is his preferred formation, and it is what eventually got Bolton automatically promoted from League Two in 2021.

The switch to a back three was understandable mid-way through the 2021/22 campaign when Wanderers struggled to get to grips with League One and key men such as Antoni Sarcevic and Eoin Doyle departed the club. Sticking with that as they produced an excellent couple of years was also reasonable.

However, Bolton are grown up now. The players should be trusted to return to the back four and, quite frankly, it is arguable that the players he has are more suited to that system.

For example, many criticise Josh Dacres-Cogley for his attacking output but he is a right-back that is tasked with being one of Bolton’s main attacking threats. If he had had the season he has just had, in which he made the League One Team of the Season, as an out and out right-back, then he the general supporter opinion would surely be very different.

The same can be said on the other side with Jack Iredale. Signed from Cambridge United as their Player of the Year for 2021/22, where he played at left-back, the Australian has been exclusively used at either left centre-back or left wing-back.

Gethin Jones, Eoin Toal, George Johnston and even Zac Ashworth are all defenders that would surely thrive better in a back four, too, whilst the likes of Carlos Mendes Gomes, Randell Williams and Aaron Collins would be given more freedom to return to positions where they have been most productive in the past out-wide. Even Victor Adeboyejo played as a winger for a team that finished sixth in the Championship whilst at Barnsley.

Bolton’s squad, with a few exciting additions in key areas such as the wing and central midfield, does seem as though it would prosper in a style that would allow for more fluency and creativity.

The last few seasons have seen the technical and tactical foundations put in place by Evatt and Sporting Director Chris Markham; it is now time for Wanderers’ house to be built. The manager should remain, but he does need to change certain aspects of his approach.