IAN Evatt said he and his squad would take collective responsibility for a disappointing home defeat to Barnsley, admitting: “We can’t keep letting the fans down!”

After watching Davis Keilor-Dunn and Adam Phillips score second-half goals to turn a Boxing Day game on its head, the Bolton boss said he could not defend a performance which ultimately leaves his side in 10th place in League One.

Fans – supportive throughout 90 minutes – voiced their anger at the final whistle, with some angry scenes also witnessed at the front of the stadium later in the evening.

Klaidi Lolos had earlier given Bolton a slender lead at the break but Evatt was at a loss to explain a poor second-half display.

“I am very frustrated,” he said. “First half was pretty good, I thought we had some good opportunities, scored a well-worked goal, Aaron has to score, it’s a simple opportunity and it has to be a goal but we know away from home in particular they are a dangerous team and they haven’t changed that much in that aspect.

“We get to the second half 1-0 up, everything seemed good, the crowd were excellent, and then all the things we speak about and all the messages I hear in the changing room – they are just words and we don’t see enough actions.

“At the start of the second half, 30 seconds in we concede a corner. We don’t work hard enough to stop crosses, we are loose, we give them an opportunity to build momentum and pressure and we didn’t give ourselves an opportunity to recover. Our game management and decisions were so poor and rather than relieve pressure and have a five-minute spell of putting the ball into good areas and taking the sting out of them a little bit we continued to play short and loose and intro trouble, which builds their momentum.

“We have two or three opportunities in the second half where we get free and speak about switching the play quickly and getting wing-backs in on goal. But, again, we try and force things through the centre.

“They are crazy, crazy decisions. In the last 10 minutes we changed things – we were short in midfield but we tried to make sure that Josh (Dacres-Cogley) and George (Thomason) marked Phillips and Russell, their two most dangerous players, Carlos (Mendes Gomes) takes care of the six. George then passes on his man (Phillips) to Will (Forrester) for no reason and he runs off the back of both of them and we concede a crazy goal.

“Rather than take our medicine and accept 1-1, we don’t do our job at set plays. These are the fundamentals of football, so I am incredibly frustrated.”

In what has been a horribly inconsistent season so far, Bolton’s players and Evatt himself have repeatedly claimed they can get back into the promotion picture, and last Friday’s resolute draw at league leaders Wycombe seemed a small step in the right direction.

Asked if he thought his side were taking responsibility for the predicament the club are now in – 16 points off automatic promotion and now three points off the top six – Evatt added: “I don’t think so. I don’t think any of us are accepting responsibility (for the inconsistency).

“I try to as much as I can but that is my team and they represent me, we are in this together and we have to do this together.

“Second half was not good enough for us, our standard and level. It’s a case of always taking one step forward and then another one or two backwards and it can’t be that way.

“We have to be better, and we have to accept as a group more responsibility.”

Wanderers host ninth-placed Lincoln City on Sunday looking for something to spark them into a positive run of form.

Evatt is also hopeful that the return of some injured players, plus recalling Aaron Morley from Wycombe next month, can create the response needed.

“We have bodies coming back, Eoin Toal and Josh Sheehan are hopefully not too far away, we can get Aaron (Morley) back which strengthens the middle of the pitch, Jay (Matete) is back from suspension, so on that front it will get better.

“But we have to perform better and stop with all the right noises and messages and go out there and transfer it on to the pitch.

“We have to accept as a group that we are nowhere near where we should be. That is my team, so I have to take responsibility for it.”

As tension grows and more and more supporters call for the board to take decisive action and make changes, Evatt appears to have the short-term backing he needs to try and repair the damage caused in the first half of the season.

But he admits his side will have to improve as the pressure increases with each passing week.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have no issue with the support, it was amazing, it was positive, they got behind the players and backed them, and we have let them down.

“We have to own that and we can’t keep letting them down or else things will change, of course they will.

“As a collective we have to take responsibility. I am the manager, I will take responsibility for them, but we have to do it together. And we have to do it on the 29th against Lincoln, get a win under our belt and try to build some momentum. We are nowhere near where we should be.”