Ian Evatt believes his Bolton Wanderers team are more than capable of winning their eight remaining games of the season in League One as they aim for a positive end to the campaign.
Wanderers sit 11th in the table as things stand and are now 11 points from the top six as their hopes of reaching the play-offs now appear to be very slim.
The Whites now have eight games left of their campaign and are next in action tomorrow on the road against bottom side Crewe Alexandra.
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After the international break, Wanderers have a trip to take on automatic promotion chasing Wigan Athletic, as well as hosting play-off hopefuls Portsmouth and Sheffield Wednesday in the week afterwards.
Evatt is adamant his players will not be relaxing between now and the end of the season and that they very much have things to play for before April concludes.
And he feels his side are more than capable of winning their remaining eight fixtures, starting tomorrow in Cheshire against the Railwaymen.
He said: "Well we’re certainly not going to put our flip flops on and go on holiday. We’ve still got things to play for. We look like we’re out of it at the moment but this team is capable of winning eight straight games, there is no doubt about that and that has to be our target.
"Now whether that’s achievable or not I don’t know, but we’re going to be doing our best to try and do that and if we can, it gives us maybe an opportunity but it’s going to take a monumental effort, there’s no doubt about that.”
"I think we all feel like we’re capable of winning eight straight games. I always speak about performance over points and I think what we’ve done over the last two games certainly is that.
"We’ve only got one point but I think we’ve performed generally really well. Eight more games to perform in and hopefully we can go a long way towards winning as many as we can.
"But I have no doubt that this group is capable of doing it. It’s our job to keep them focused and make sure that we finish strongly because it’s important that we carry some momentum through.
"Ticket sales for the summer, rebuilding our brand and our club, and going again next season. But this season isn’t over yet."
Regardless of if Wanderers do not achieve promotion in the weeks to come, Bolton have still had a good first season back in League One, having come up from League Two last campaign.
Evatt believes that there are now foundations put in place to achieve success in the future at Wanderers but that a huge effort is needed if the prospect of the play-offs is to still be on the cards this campaign.
He said: "We’re professional people in a professional industry so we have to remain professional at all times and that means giving our 100 per cent for this football club every single day, not just matchdays.
"That’s the bare minimum and we’ll do that to the best of our abilities and our target is to win eight straight games, it has to be our target but there’s accountability, we have high standards, that’s day to day and if you don’t get up to those standards, you get told. That’s the kind of environment we’ve created.
"It’s a good environment, we’re happy with it, there’s still improvement to come but there’s been some good signs.
"We’re not where we want to be, of course we’re not, but we’ve still achieved a lot this season for a newly promoted team I believe and what we’ve done is given ourselves better and more stable foundations to build for the future. That’s what we wanted to do and achieve.
“I’m the worst one for wanting success right now, I’m used to success and you go back through my playing record and my managerial record, I’ve had a lot of promotions, a lot of success.
"So this season we want to achieve that and we still feel we can, but it’s going to take a huge effort and this team and this squad is capable of doing it.”
