Steven Schumacher has fixed key Bolton Wanderers issue that Ian Evatt could not solve | OneFootball

Steven Schumacher has allowed Bolton Wanderers to play with more flexibility and tactical variety in the final third.

Bolton Wanderers have started the season steadily but will be looking to go up a few gears and kick on to really sustain themselves as a promotion challenger, and that is now something that they will believe is possible, having been limited beforehand.

The Trotters started their campaign with a 2-0 defeat to local rivals Stockport County at Edgeley Park on the opening day of the campaign, but it was an encouraging performance for a rebuilding Bolton side that had lost that fixture by five goals to nil last year.

Steven Schumacher is embarking upon his first full season in charge of the Whites and he has had his work cut out over the summer to untangle the rot, as harsh as that may sound, that had set in in the latter stages of the Ian Evatt era.

Wanderers collapsed to a mid-table finish last season and barring a so-called ‘new manager bounce’ in his first month and a half in charge, things only got a fair bit worse following the appointment of Schumacher.

However, having been granted an unlikely squad overhaul over the summer, with plenty of big name first-teamers let go and 14 new signings arriving at the Toughsheet Community Stadium, he is under pressure to ensure there is major improvement this season.

After a slow-ish start, things could be about to ramp up a bit, and there will be a belief that their ability to go through the gears will be indicative of the flexibility that is now apparent in this Wanderers side, and that could be crucial if they are to sustain a legitimate promotion push.

Bolton have more variety to their attack under Steven Schumacher

After gaining promotion from League Two in 2021, Bolton spent a few months playing a back four in League One before then opting to play exclusively a back three system for three years.

It gave Evatt’s team a floor and a platform to build on, and the overall goal of promotion to the Championship was nearly realised in the 2023/24 season with a third place finish and then a play-off final defeat.

However, whilst providing Bolton with a solid base during their relatively successful run, it also massively limited their attacking potential, and became so stagnant as to be easily exploited, thus leading to the departure of Evatt in January 2025.

A lot is made about Bolton’s inability to ‘rise to the occasion’ under Evatt, and therefore mentality issues within the squad, and whilst that may be true, it does ignore fairly glaring issues that were there in a tactical sense.

Wanderers were so dogmatic in their approach that an entire squad, aided by former Director of Football Chris Markham, was assembled to play just one system.

Naturally, when things didn’t go well or to plan, or it was clear that Bolton were going to succumb to a narrow defeat to due to a lack of options in the final third; there was no way of changing things, not that Evatt would have wanted to anyway.

If ‘Plan A’ didn’t succeed then the players simply had to do it better, but when ‘Plan A’ begins to fail with regularity then the belief of the players and their supporters dwindles.

If a manager stays at a club for such a long time then there is undoubtedly going to be a period of stagnation, but it is then up to the coach to freshen things up. However, such was the tactical dogma, things remained the same and simply just got worse.

Not only did the tactical setup not shift, the squad had become stale and simply needed freshening up – even more so when the inevitable shift in the system was required.

The squad reshape is helping Bolton find solutions

Schumacher has signed actual wide players for Bolton this summer, because the Trotters had built a squad without any out and out wingers and only one out and out striker, the injury prone Victor Adeboyejo, on the books.

No wingers or strikers in the squad isn’t necessarily surprising when elevens previously named by Evatt had so many defensive players in them, with the whole approach of scoring a goal and beating a team being system driven.

Now, with the signings of the likes of Amario Cozier-Duberry and Thierry Gale, there is the ability for Bolton to score from areas of the pitch that weren’t previously possible.

For example, Cozier-Duberry’s strike against AFC Wimbledon recently wasn’t one that could have happened during the Evatt era, because a left footed natural attacker would not have been in a position to do that.

Joel Randall’s goal from the same game is another that wouldn’t have been possible because it came from a long range shot taken by Max Conway – another thing that wouldn’t have been permitted.

This may seem hyperbolic but Evatt was so tactically rigid and had such belief in his methods that ingenuity in the final third had been coached out of players with the system the key.

Wanderers still have sophisticated patterns of play, albeit not nearly as deliberate as under Evatt, but they also now have a lot of variation to the way in which they attack.

Whether it be through a lightning fast counter-attack, which Bolton can now do because they do not want over 60% of the ball every week, or whether it be from allowing talented players to make decisions for themselves in the final third, the Whites have alternative routes to goal.

It could well be that relying on moments of individual quality isn’t as sustainable as ensuring the ball gets to the by-line and cut-back 10-15 times per game, but the latter is also an unsustainable style when working with third-tier footballers.

Whether Schumacher’s style and its ability to be flexible and adapt will work better than Evatt’s moving forward remains to be seen, but what has been seen so far this season is a varied way of playing that is seeing Wanderers score different types of goals and therefore look a threat even when they don’t have the ball.