Bolton Wanderers have had one repeated transfer disappointment under Ian Evatt: View | OneFootball

There is a theme at Bolton Wanderers under Ian Evatt where a certain type of player arrives after being talked up by the manager but then 'flops'.

A theme throughout Ian Evatt’s tenure at Bolton Wanderers has been one similar sort of signing – the attacking ‘maverick’ – failing to live up to expectations.

From Marcus Maddison to Shola Shoretire and a few others during his four-season reign at the Toughsheet Community Stadium, Evatt has at times, failed to integrate creative talents into his methodical, possession-based style of football.

The Trotters have shifted to a 3-4-2-1 system in which those sorts of players are now absolutely essential, ironically when they couldn’t actually adapt to the 3-5-2 or 4-2-3-1 in the past.

There are reasons for it, none of them absolutely categorically proven to be the truth behind the failures, but they are worth exploring as Evatt attempts to lift Bolton out of League One at the fourth attempt this season.

Evatt’s habit of building up expectation

In his first season in charge, with plenty of other soundbites that riled up both Bolton fans as well as opposition supporters throughout, Evatt began to build up a mystery arrival ahead of the January transfer deadline.

Describing him as a ‘maverick’ as he talked up the player before the name had come out in the press, Evatt went on to confirm he'd "said I might have something up my sleeve and Marcus is an extremely talented boy".

With praise heaped on him before and after his name became known as Bolton’s mystery signing, Maddison was duly sent off on debut and featured ten times for the Trotters before departing at the end of the season.

A couple of years later, still seemingly not learning the lesson, Bolton brought in Manchester United youngster Shola Shoretire on a loan deal until the end of the season after the sale of Dapo Afolayan to St Pauli had been confirmed.

Chasing the play-off positions in League One, Bolton had let their star man go but Evatt had eased the panic and even hinted at a potentially exciting deal before the close of the window.

Shoretire arrived and Evatt said that the Manchester United loanee could "make the difference" as they searched for promotion back to the second-tier of English football.

The attacker, who joined PAOK Salonika after departing Old Trafford on a free transfer this summer, started brightly with some good performances in 5-0 victories over Peterborough United and Milton Keynes Dons before then fading quite badly, ending up out of the team and not even staying with the squad during the end of season play-off campaign.

Struggling to adapt to the Bolton Wanderers system

In those two instances, though there are others such as Kieran Sadlier, who is now thriving at Wycombe Wanderers, as well as Carlos Mendes Gomes, still at the club but struck down by injuries, players that arrived with such fanfare and optimism should be able to adapt.

However, when it happens more than once or twice, it surely has to go beyond the actual player and more on the system or the style of football being played – even Afolayan had fallen out of the starting eleven before his move to Germany, for example.

The sophisticated passing patterns of play limit the innovation and intuition of someone like Maddison, for example, and, despite Evatt’s suggestions, there appeared little room for someone to be able to create from nothing.

Shoretire, on the other hand, had started well but then soon found himself shifted into a front two as Evatt continued to aim for caution rather than a more attacking style of football. Unsuited to that role and in a physical league, he eventually faded out of the side.

With Evatt now deploying the 3-4-2-1, it will be interesting to see whether Aaron Collins can continue to buck the trend, albeit his season has started slowly, and as to whether this summer’s ‘maverick’ number ten signing, whom Evatt has said he had to make up with after squabbles at the end of the play-off ties against Barnsley last year, John McAtee, will become another name on the list of clearly talented attackers that are not suited to the often frustrating Evatt style.