A Man Out Of Ideas: Ian Evatt, It’s Time To Go

Jonny shares his thoughts after todays defeat

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Ahead of this season’s curtain raiser against Leyton Orient, I, like many others, was filled with a cautious optimism that only football fans are familiar with. Genuinely impressed with our recruitment and the way the club had seemingly prepared for the upcoming season (alongside the noises made about bouncing back from defeat at Wembley), I was both happy and excited to see a swathe of fresh blood and renewed buoyancy make its way into the Bolton Wanderers ecosystem.

You may remember a piece I penned ahead of that game against Orient which floated the idea that this season could indeed be Ian Evatt’s last dance. Well folks, I’m sorry to say: I believe the curtain has well and truly come down. In the middle of September.

Devoid of ideas, lacking in fight, spirit or anything resembling a team challenging for promotion, I fear our club is once again slipping into the jaws of total, uncontrollable meltdown.

A fully-funded pre-season and an even more active transfer market (not even including spending “big” in January) was meant to create a springboard for Operation Bounce Back. Another one of Evatt’s mates in the backroom staff. Big sponsors on board plus stadium and training ground upgrades. To all intents and purposes, we looked and felt like a club on the ascendancy.

However, anyone who sat in their seat at the Toughsheet Community Stadium today will be well aware of one, simple, glaring fact: that could not be further from the truth.

We find ourselves with a manager who is full to bursting with a horrible, toxic cocktail - ego, excuses and not a single idea of how to get his squad to play the way he’s asking. We’ve had some incredible moments under Evatt over the last few years but we are now in a situation where his position at the club has become untenable.

One league win in five.

A 0-4 home defeat after a full international break of preparation.

One of the worst 2024 records in the division.

Players struggling to string a series of passes together, let alone looking like scoring.

The manager walking solemnly straight down the tunnel at full time, without a shred of decency to applaud his opponents or even the home support subjected to the inane drivel perpetuated by his team.

It’s all very… telling. The signs are more than obvious. This has been festering, growing, building for some time.

22,532 of us did not watch a Yorkshire masterclass today. We watched the very fabric of our club beginning to smoulder, with the embers dangerously close to setting the whole thing alight. Not one Wanderers fan can argue that today, or any of our performances this season, have been anywhere close to the level expected of this squad.

The system is broken. The manager and his ramshackle backroom staff of drinking buddies do not know how to fix it. The fans have, so it seems, all but turned.

It’s time for Ian Evatt to leave Bolton Wanderers and for the board to put the fire out, before the whole thing goes up in flames (again).