Crawley 0-2 Bolton Wanderers - Ian Evatt post match reaction

The Bolton boss praised his players for altering their familiar possession-based approach at the Broadfield Stadium but still managing to come away with a win thanks to goals from Kyle Dempsey and John McAtee.

Crawley finished with 69 per cent of the ball, enjoying some long spells of pressure either side of half time, but they rarely looked like making a breakthrough to really test the Whites’ resolve.

Evatt explained: “We have to be adaptable, and Crawley are a team that try to do a lot of quirky things, they try and dominate the ball and there is a lot of rotation. They are so expansive in possession that sometimes you have to allow the first few to set traps and spring forward on the counter and I think first half we executed that perfectly. The only negative was that it should have been game over, and credit to their keeper who made some fantastic saves.

“At the start of the second half I thought we were a little bit too passive. We were caught between when to allow a couple of passes and when to spring aggressively but once we made the changes it all kicked in again and it looked more likely.

“For all the pressure I can’t remember any big saves that Nathan Baxter made and Rico Santos was back to the player we know and love.

“So, there were lots of positives but it’s just a small step forward.”

Wanderers have now strung back-to-back league wins together for the first time since April and moved up into mid-table after a poor start to the campaign.

Major questions were asked of Evatt and his side, who looked to be struggling to overcome the disappointment of losing the previous season’s play-off final against Oxford United.

Evatt is delighted to see them turning a corner.

He said: “I just know that the players we have are good players, I never lost belief even after we’d lost a few games. I knew who good they could be but they were devoid of confidence, there was clearly a hangover from the play-offs and we needed to find some momentum so we could start believing again.

“Sometimes in football you suffer, and we certainly did for a couple of weeks with some very poor results and performances but this shows how quicky football can turn.

“This is a first result of a big week, and I am including Saturday and Tuesday in that before the international break, and if we can get results in both of those games we will be right back to where we want to be.

“We are getting bodies back but we lost another one on Wednesday in Chris Forino, who is going to be out for a while with a hamstring injury. We are getting players minutes, we are keeping them fit, and now it’s a big push before the window where we can reset and build confidence again.”

Evatt was given a yellow card by referee Jacob Miles in the first half for protesting a foul on George Johnston but feels a niggly game had plenty worse within.

He said: “I think there was a lot worse going on on the pitch today, some of the dark arts, late challenges, things going on off the ball that we didn’t spot or the referees didn’t spot. I just said to him there I don’t think I did anything wrong, I appeared for a foul and gpt yellow-carded. There was a lot worse going on which went without caution or discipline so it must be a reputational thing, I guess.”

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