Ian Evatt admits people have the right to write off Bolton Wanderers’ chances of reaching the League One play-offs but he insists he will not allow the players to give up while they have something to mathematically play for.
Bolton’s chances of being in the top six took a big blow with the 1-0 loss at the University of Bolton Stadium over the weekend against Plymouth Argyle.
Wanderers went behind just before half-time after Macaulay Gillesphey headed home from Jordan Houghton’s corner.
READ MORE:Bolton Wanderers boss Ian Evatt on Plymouth Argyle loss, goal conceded and play-off chances
The defeat means Wanderers now sit 10 points from the League One play-offs with eight matches left of their season, while sides above them have games in hand.
Evatt admits he cannot argue with people writing off Bolton’s chances of reaching the top six this season, but that he and the players will not give up on their aims and will keep driving standards in order to achieve it.
The Bolton boss admits the loss to Plymouth and the draw against Morecambe were harder results to take than others where Wanderers have dropped points owing to the way they performed in those encounters.
Having made seven signings in the January transfer window, Evatt admits it has been a steep learning curve for his new look squad and that they perhaps have given themselves too much to do to reach the top six with their mid-season blip.
But he has vowed they will try their best to get as many points as possible between now and the end of Apri and is aiming to bounce back when they travel to take on bottom side Crewe Alex next Saturday.
He said: “People can do that (write off chances) and that’s fine. They’ve probably got the right to do that but it’s just not in me to give up. It’s just not in the players. We won’t allow it. We have to keep driving standards every day in training.
“We know what we’re capable of and I think that’s the disappointing thing, the points we’ve dropped, we can accept the MK Dons one and the Burton one because we don’t feel like we did ourselves justice.
“The ones that are tougher to take are Tuesday and today where we feel we’ve performed really well and not got what we deserved but we’ll go again, we’ll work hard this week and get ready for Crewe.
“We’ve still got so much work to do. This is fundamentally a new group, seven new players in January is a lot.
“We’re still working on them, we’ve had a big turnover of players this year and it’s needed to and we’re improving all the time.
“Have we improved fast enough to make up for that bad couple of months? Maybe not, but we’re going to keep going and keep trying to get as many points as possible.”
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