Time is now for Bolton Wanderers to make Ian Evatt call | OneFootball

With the international break now underway, it is a good time for Bolton Wanderers to take the decision to sack manager Ian Evatt.

International breaks are often the best time for a club to make a decision to sack or appoint a manager with the new man able to get his feet under the desk before his debut.

There will be plenty of clubs across the EFL’s 72 that are considering it but one club that now should pull the trigger would be last season’s League One play-off finalists Bolton Wanderers.

Neutrals or people from the side may suggest that this would be a knee-jerk decision to end what is the four-and-a-half-year reign of Ian Evatt on the back of a poor season start, but nobody knows or understands a club better than its supporters and even the most patient of supporters must, perhaps without anger or vitriol but a more reluctant acceptance, now see the end is, let alone nigh, but now.

After a 5-0 shellacking at the hands of Greater Manchester rivals Stockport County at Edgeley Park on Saturday afternoon, the Trotters are once again licking their wounds from another heavy defeat and everything about the situation suggests the end of the Evatt era at Bolton.

Bolton's sustained bad form

Despite the second-half stoppage-time winner to defeat Fleetwood Town by two goals to one and progress into the knockout stages of the EFL Trophy on Tuesday, Bolton’s poor form has not been a short thing.

From the outside looking in, a team that finished third last year and has steadily progressed throughout each season of the Evatt tenure, then sacking their manager in November, the season after a play-off final, may be viewed as a fickle decision.

However, the poor start to the season has not been a case of something new but a case of sustained poor performances and results that have lasted throughout the calendar year.

The Trotters have won just 22 of their 51 matches across all competitions since the beginning of 2024 and, for a team that is built to challenge for the League One title, that is simply not good enough.

Injuries have hurt Bolton, but they cannot be used as an excuse for such prolonged poor form and average performances and what hurts Bolton fans most is the refusal to acknowledge something has been majorly wrong.

There has been a claim from Evatt, and even new signings such as Scott Arfield, to suggest things hadn’t gone wrong last season and only a few things needed tweaking.

That level of arrogance and ignorance to a problem means something that is broken will never get fixed, and the 5-0 loss at Stockport this weekend was just another example of something being broken.

Evatt and Bolton's fanbase have had their troubles

Something that Evatt has been guilty of throughout his time at Bolton boss, has been saying the wrong thing at the wrong time during interviews with the media.

Whether it be claiming Bolton were the best side in the league in a season they finished ninth, telling an 18-year-old goalkeeper to ‘man up’ after a couple of mistakes, talking about deals that will get done before they get done and then that not happening – there has always been something a little frustrating about it.

Evatt has turned on the supporters a couple of times, too, criticising a vocal minority, which has admittedly now become the majority. That has happened from his first season, in which games were actually played behind closed doors.

He said he found it ‘strange’ that Bolton fans would criticise the style of football in the aftermath of their 5-0 loss to Stockport and that would be a brilliant example of the aforementioned arrogance and level to which he is out of touch.

Loyalty was something that chairman Sharon Brittain was keen to stress when deciding to keep hold of Evatt after the humiliating 2-0 loss to Oxford United at Wembley Stadium in May, but now we endure radio silence from the woman who did save the club in 2019 and will forever be given legendary status within the town for that.

The radio silence on this subject, though, is one that irritates Wanderers supporters. The club’s hierarchy appear to have sided with the manager rather than the fans at this stage, too, despite the alarming defeat to Stockport.

Action is needed sooner rather than later, though. Now is the time for Bolton and Evatt to bring an end to their souring relationship - a view that's shared across the majority of the fanbase.