Steven Schumacher cannot be blinded by Bolton Wanderers feat | OneFootball

Steven Schumacher's stint at Bolton has begun with similar results and performances that were happening under Ian Evatt with improvement required.

It has been a mixed start to Steven Schumacher’s tenure as Bolton Wanderers head coach with one dramatic and extraordinary victory alongside two defeats, one of those in the league and the other in the EFL Trophy.

Bolton head into this weekend sitting just outside of the League One the play-off places having been one of the pre-season title favourites, hence the recent departure of Ian Evatt after what was around 12 months of underperformance.

Wanderers fans will have been encouraged by their dramatic come-from-behind 4-3 defeat of Crawley Town last weekend in a game in which all seven goals were scored in the second half and saw the Red Devils take a 3-1 lead just after the hour mark.

A dramatic turnaround concluded with a 99th-minute winner being scored for the Whites to give Schumacher a meaningful and much-needed lift-off to his time in charge at the club.

However, there will be concerns that the victory and overall performance was yet another continuation of all that has gone wrong through this season after losing to Oxford United in last season’s League One play-off final at Wembley Stadium.

Bolton Wanderers' habit of desperate wins

Even when Bolton were underperforming in the first half of this campaign, the Trotters had made a habit of earning last-gasp victories in desperate circumstances when the game had been stagnant.

In October, Wanderers defeated Peterborough United by a goal to nil with Klaidi Lolos scoring in the 99th minute, bundling home after Dion Charles had a penalty saved. A month later, Aaron Collins notched in the 94th minute to complete a turnaround against Lancashire rivals Blackpool and defeat the Seasiders 2-1.

Both victories and winning goals came at the end of games in which Bolton had reverted to ‘throwing the kitchen sink’, to use match-going parlance, at their opposition and had more or less given up on their conservative and often overly deliberate passing style of football.

In both circumstances, that more gung-ho approach, hardly sustainable over the course of a full campaign, did produce two of their better, if not best, performances from this season under Evatt.

When 3-1 down at home to relegation-battling opposition with only half an hour to go in a new manager’s first home game in charge – there are no options left other than to once again desperately launch yourself at your opponents.

That did allow Bolton to score three very different goals but there will be a completely reasonable concern that that level of desperation is, as mentioned, not something you can play with in every game and it cannot even be argued that it is a new thing for the new coach because, as mentioned, Wanderers have pulled off wins in similar situations already this season.

Steven Schumacher needs to prove Ian Evatt wrong

In one of the final ignominious days of his reign following a 3-1 defeat to Rotherham United at the New York Stadium last month, Evatt, in an interview with Wanderers TV, said that changing him would not fix anything because it would still be the "same players" with the "same personalities" having often critiqued their mentality throughout his tenure and especially in the opening few months of this season.

With interim coach and boyhood Bolton fan Julian Darby at the helm, Bolton pulled off two wins from two and, especially in their 1-0 win away at Huddersfield Town, there did appear to be a real shift in the way the players were playing – both in style and endeavour.

It is far too short a sample size to suggest there is concrete evidence this set of players and this squad can play differently and can act differently to how they have for the last year or so and the results and performances since – the defeats to Reading and Wrexham as well as the late Crawley win – would only strengthen Evatt’s argument.

Schumacher needs time to turn the tide but he cannot let games like last weekend blind him. Wanderers turned that one around and showed real spirit but the level of performance was not good enough and the standards simply have to rise.

The new manager cannot overvalue good results because it's the performances that need to change if he is to prove his predecessor wrong by showing that this group – at least the majority of them – can have success at League One level.