‘We’re still fighting!’ – Wanderers won’t give up promotion chase, vows Evatt

Even though PROMOTION’s lead may have evaporated following Saturday’s stalemate with Portsmouth, Ian Evatt believes the battle is far from over.

To maintain pressure on their rivals heading into the penultimate round of League One games, Wanderers, who are presently four points behind Derby County, must win their game in hand against Shrewsbury on Tuesday night.

The Toughsheet Stadium saw a valiant effort, but the outcome would have maintained the Whites in charge of their own top two destiny. Aaron Collins’ header ensured Pompey did not win the league title or promotion.

Now, Wanderers are hoping to get a favor from Cambridge United the next weekend, but first they need to beat the Shrews to close the difference to one point. The partisan mood created by the large crowd of 25,738 on Saturday is something the Bolton boss is now hoping can be repeated under the lights in the middle of the week.

He said to The Bolton News, “We haven’t lost anything yet.” “We need every single individual who was at that stadium to show up on Tuesday and go again. We are still fighting, and we will fight.”

This football match has a tendency to be shocking and unexpected. It is imperative that we position ourselves to capitalize on any turns and detours.

We now have two home games against teams we know will come here and fight and give us nothing because strange things happen.

We all have a role to play, thus we need to encourage one another as participants. Anything can still happen if we can bring it to a point because Derby is playing away from home the following Sunday while we play at home against Port Vale.

“We are aware that a win against Portsmouth would have left the game in our hands, but even a point means Derby now needs to win both games in order to avoid having to settle for a draw.

“We also need to take care of business. I can’t be too hard on the guys because they gave it their all, but we didn’t get the outcome we were hoping for.

Against Pompey, who now need just one more point to secure promotion and three for the championship, Wanderers had 19 shots on goal. For the second time this season, Evatt was left thinking back on a game where his team thought their effort had merited more than it gained, even though five of those shots were on goal.

We’re among the top scorers in the nation—I believe we’re in second place in this division—but we feel like we could have scored a lot more, he said. “We’ve had this talk before.”

That’s a natural progression. We must use more ruthlessness and clinicality.

“We didn’t necessarily generate much more when we scored five goals against Oxford or Reading, but we were clinical on those days, and we weren’t here.

“What matters to me is the performance level; if you play at that level, you should win games, but we haven’t done that today.”

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