Ian Evatt believes there is no wastage whatsoever in the Bolton Wanderers squad as he reinforced the message that the League One club will walk away from future transfer deals for players if the money they would have to commit exceeds their valuation.
Wanderers are seeking to make a promotion charge in earnest in the upcoming campaign. They finished ninth in the previous season and want to build on that with their sights set on the top six.
So far there have been three acquisitions made this summer. Jack Iredale has been signed up on a permanent basis following his release by Cambridge United, while James Trafford has returned from Manchester City on loan for another season, and Conor Bradley has been signed up for the campaign from Liverpool.
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Wanderers have adopted a quality over quantity approach in terms of signings this summer. This has been down to the work done in the January transfer window where seven players were captured, five of which were on permanent deals.
That has completed changed the face of the squad and made it fit for purpose to challenge for the higher echelons of League One. Evatt beleives the January business means there is now no wastage in the squad and the incomings from earlier this year means there is continuity on that front.
Evatt says Wanderers have missed out on a couple of transfer targets this summer and is something that they are experiencing for the first time since he arrived at the club in 2020. But patience will be used to bring in future targets as Wanderers are willing to walk away from deals if the valuation exceeds what they deem to it be worth.
He said: “It shows how far we have come to be in this position, right now. I look at this squad and when everyone is fit and available there is no wastage. There is not one player that I think cannot contribute, which is a massive bonus for me.
“There is continuity. We got together in January and one of the reasons why we did so much work then was to give us a five-month window to embed everybody and ingrain what we are trying to do. We have done that now but the thing is in football that at the end of every season your credit runs out and you have to start all over again.
“My vision for this football club is that we want to be sustainable. And that is a really difficult thing to do in football. The amount of money being spent in every division at the moment is incredible and you get to hear in circles about players who have been offered X, Y and Z from other clubs and we won’t be that club.
“We have a valuation for someone and if we don’t get it then we are happy to walk away. And that isn’t because Sharon and the rest of the board are saying there is no money available – there is money, more than enough – but I don’t want us to be that. I want to be smart and strategic and do things the right way.
“I am really pleased with where we are at. We have lost out on a couple of targets this summer but we haven’t really had that yet as a club. It doesn’t mean we will miss out, it just means we have to be patient for the next opportunity and football will always give you one.
“We have to rely on our ability to get the best out of our players and be the best coached team, the fittest team, all these one per cent gains that we can make.
“I have a fantastic team behind me and not only have we invested in the team, we have invested in the staff too. In fact, I was sat at dinner last night wondering ‘where have all these staff come from?’
“Two years ago, me, Peter, Lewis and Matt were doing everything and now all of a sudden we have a team of analysts, S&C guys, physio department, and it is all to get the best out of these players and I think we will see the benefit of that this season."
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