Burton and Birmingham City should be wary of Bolton Wanderers, Ian Evatt repeat: View | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers returned from the October international break in 2023 and went on an excellent run of form and they will hope to do so again.

It has been a disappointing start to the season for Bolton Wanderers following on from losing the League One play-off final to Oxford United at Wembley Stadium in May, a few weeks after they had narrowly missed out on automatic promotion on the final day of the season, finishing off what was a second half of the season collapse for the Trotters.

However, as they prepare to return from a much-needed October international break without manager Ian Evatt, who has been handed a three-match ban for his actions at the end of Wanderers’ 2-2 draw with Shrewsbury Town before the break, the Whites will look to emulate what they did last year.

Burton Albion at the Toughsheet Community Stadium and Birmingham City at St Andrew's are the next assignments in the third tier for Bolton and those two sides will have to be wary of what happened last year when the Trotters went into the October interval on the back of some similarly poor form and results.

Bolton need to take inspiration from last year

Bolton went into the 2023 October international break on the back of a 3-1 defeat at home to a Carlisle United side that would not only go on to finish rock-bottom in League One last season but now find themselves at the foot of the League Two table just 12 months later.

That defeat at home to the Cumbrians came on the back of Bolton dropping points in four of their previous seven matches, too, as their three-match winning streak to kick off the campaign quickly faded away, leaving them sixth in the League One table.

However, after a much-needed two-week break to re-focus themselves, Bolton returned with a 2-1 defeat of Northampton Town that would begin a run of eight successive victories and ten wins with one draw in their next 11 matches across all competitions.

That run would propel them to top spot in the third tier before their mid-to-late-season slump, which has continued into the current campaign, too, really kicked in.

The insipid and damaged Evatt

This time around they return to league football sitting 13th in the table after ten matches, following a really poor start to the campaign in which they have managed just four victories in their opening nine matches.

The aforementioned mid-to-late-season slump of last year can be summarised well with the following statistic: Bolton have won just 17 of their 43 matches across all competitions since New Year’s Day.

For a team that has spent decent amounts of money on the likes of Aaron Collins, Szabolcs Schon, and John McAtee, as well as a few others in that time and one that should be, by all pundits and bookies’ reckonings, challenging for the League One title, that record is pretty disgraceful.

The banning of Evatt perhaps speaks to the current pressure he is under but he now needs his side to re-focus, as they did last year, though this time without their strong-willed manager on the sidelines.

Bolton have endured plenty of poor runs of form during his tenure but this is perhaps the most sustained and generally worrying one because of the seeming lack of acknowledgement that something is wrong. In fact, he has now suggested everything was going well and reverted to the original idea that saw them ‘bottle’ promotion on two occasions last season.

Whether or not things can properly turn around in the long-term is one thing but there will be a major hope and even expectation that, just like almost exactly 12 months ago, the break will do Bolton, a team that were tipped for a top-two finish again, can reignite something and find a fluency starting up against a Burton Albion side in something nearing being categorised as ‘disarray’.

Defeating the Brewers is simply a ‘must’ in any situation but especially given the form of the two sides and the desperate need to do so. Getting a result in the second city against league-leading Birmingham City is another question.

If Wanderers can rediscover their form in the nick of time then the performance and result at St Andrew's could be genuinely indicative of what is to come for Bolton this season – and just how long Evatt will last at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.