IAN Evatt believes ripping up the Wanderers gameplan at this stage of the season would be counter productive.

The Bolton boss has come under increasing pressure to produce more consistent results in League One, with some supporters also voicing their discontent with the style of football being played.

Evatt has stood by his possession-based approach for the last four-and-a-half years, and though the Whites boss has tried to make tactical tweaks since last season’s play-off final disappointment against Oxford United, the overall performance this season has remained below par.

Asked if he would seek to change the way his side play, Evatt said to do so at this stage would cause more harm than good.

“If I don’t believe in it, how will I get the players to believe in it?” he said. “On the flip side, the players do believe in it because we have had success doing it in the last four-and-a-half years.

“We have recruited to that system and the way we play, so changing things and ripping up everything we have built is not going to be good for anybody.

“It is more about getting better at what we do, and we have introduced some new players, and finding slight variations.

“That is another thing we can do better, not completely rip it up but find some slight variations to cause teams more problems. We are looking at things all the time.”

Wanderers started the season with a 3-4-3 formation but poor results early in the campaign saw them move almost exclusively back to 3-5-2. The plan to dominate possession has remained throughout but even though they took 67.1 per cent of the ball against Mansfield, a 2-1 defeat which left the club 10th in the table and five points outside the play-offs heading to Exeter City this afternoon left yet more frustrated supporters.

Despite the final product still being far from satisfactory, Evatt has seen some improvement.

“There are things I have seen that I like – maybe inverting the wing-backs, for instance, playing them on the opposite side,” he said.

“The way we build up and things like that are giving us some more options against different presses. The last couple of games, in particular, I think we have been better and looked more dynamic.

“We just haven’t finished our chances off, which is obviously crucial to winning games.”

Evatt readily accepts that simply dominating the ball will not help his side get to where they want to be – but he believes that controlling the game remains a vital factor regaining the lost consistency.

“The possession, data and stats give you one story but the scoreline gives you a different one,” he said. “At the moment, people are only interested in the scoreline and I completely understand that.

“I would like to think I am process-driven and I believe if we play like we did on Wednesday, you will win more times than you lose. Yes, we have to cut out some stupid individual and collective mistakes. The goals were extremely poor, but a lot was very good and we have to build on that, gain some belief and confidence and start to pick up results consistently.”

Wanderers are 16 points behind second-placed Birmingham City but do have the requisite games in hand to move into the play-off spots if they took maximum advantage.

Promotion, says Evatt, remains the only goal.

“We believe that we can certainly finish in the top six, that hasn’t changed or wavered,” he said. “We have obviously got room to improve and we have a lot of ground to make up to push the automatic spots, but we have seen that happen before as well.

“For now, it is just about the next game. It is OK having these bigger goals and targets but what are the small steps that will get you to achieve those? Our first of those small steps is Exeter on Saturday.”