Bolton Wanderers: Ian Evatt must hope slow start is teething issue not deeper 2024 problem - View | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers have started the season in underwhelming fashion and there is a worry this is a hangover from last year with a deeper malaise set in.

Key Takeaways

Bolton Wanderers played their first home game in League One of the 2024/25 season and were held to a goalless draw by newly-promoted Wrexham, managed by former Bolton boss Phil Parkinson, who led Wanderers to automatic promotion from the third tier in the 2016/17 campaign.

There were quite a few groans at the end of that game from Bolton supporters that have grown impatient at the lack of cutting-edge and incision in the final third from Bolton’s possession-based style of football.

Ian Evatt rightly pointed out that a lot of, if not most of, what Bolton did last season was good hence why they only missed out on a top-two finish on the final day of the season before losing the League One play-off final to Oxford United.

However, whilst that point, which was followed up similarly by new signing Scott Arfield, has its merits, there is a danger that it ignores the fact Wanderers slipped away so badly at the end of last term.

In terms of 90-minute matches, so not including a penalty shootout victory over another newly-promoted team in Mansfield Town in the first round of the EFL Cup last week, Wanderers have now managed just 12 wins in 32 games across all competitions since New Year’s Day.

Despite tactical tweaks, there have been reasons to be concerned that it is more of the same from the Whites this season and Evatt will have to desperately hope they are just tactical teething issues, rather than anything more that may well be sustained.

Ian Evatt’s tactical tweaks and finding a formula

At the start of the summer, Evatt discussed the need for Bolton to be more tactically flexible and to recruit along those lines and they have shifted from a flat 3-5-2 system to more of a 3-4-2-1 or 3-4-3.

That, with any switch after a long period of time, is going to have its teething issues with players adjusting to new roles and Evatt also highlighted the fact that his pre-season was disrupted by injuries, with players not being there to take on and understand new information that he and his coaching staff were giving to them.

Whilst there was a win on the opening day of the season at Brisbane Road at Leyton Orient, Wanderers were fortuitous in that game, reliant on a couple of excellent saves from goalkeeper Nathan Baxter and also benefitting from a keeper error for Victor Adeboyejo to notch the winner with very few clear-cut chances, other than Dion Charles’ characteristic sitter after some good play from John McAtee.

It does almost seem as though a front three of McAtee, Aaron Collins, and Charles are set up to be devastating and ruthless on the counter-attack and that contrasts with the known preferred style of football of Evatt, as a self-confessed follower of Pep Guardiola’s methods.

With George Thomason also able to get from box-to-box with ease he would seem suited to that, too, and that sort of neglects or diminishes the role of Josh Sheehan, who had thrived in what was a deep-lying playmaker role behind two central midfielders with the Welshman now having to adjust to playing further up the pitch with less time on the ball to be as precise and as incisive as he was.

The free role of both McAtee and Collins also confuses matters when Szbalocs Schon and Josh Dacres-Cogley are tasked with getting in behind the opposition full-backs but finding themselves then occupying the space of the split McAtee or Collins.

We are only two League One games into the new shape but the complexity of it, when combined with the sophisticated passing style of football, does mean there has already been a fair bit of toothlessness and a lack of ‘automatism’ to their play, as Eden Hazard once described Antonio Conte’s attacking patterns of play.

Same patterns emerging for Bolton Wanderers

The worry for Evatt and Bolton Wanderers supporters would be that this isn’t just teething issues and a lot of the same failings from last season have actually just been shown in a different system.

Bolton have had no trouble in terms of scoring goals statistically with the Trotters always high on the list for teams in the Premier League and the EFL across all competitions but those statistics were aided by big wins in the FA Cup and the EFL Trophy last season.

In the league, there has been an ability to score a lot of goals, too, but Evatt’s style of football does rely on a precision that a lot of players at League One and League Two level simply do not possess.

He will be hopeful that the standard has been raised by some impressive recruitment this summer but the point remains that they could well simply be hamstrung by the talent not being high enough to play the style of football he wants to a consistently effective degree – regardless of the system.

It is too early to suggest either way whether this is an extension of the 2024 malaise but Evatt, as one of the longest-serving managers in the EFL, may well have hit a ceiling he cannot break through with this group of players.

The performances in the opening three competitive matches of the season leave a lot to be desired and remind many of last season’s late capitulation so a bit of urgency and energy will have to be shown at The Valley this weekend when they take on Charlton Athletic, who have started League One with back-to-back 1-0 victories and a tight defence, or questions will grow louder and patience will become even thinner than it already is.