DIFFICULT to define, consistently inconsistent, successful yet found wanting in the crucial moments, misunderstood, underappreciated, at odds with the majority; welcome to 2024 at Bolton Wanderers.

At various times through this topsy-turvy 12 months the outlook from the outside has conflicted to the one from within. For the first time since Bolton and football’s great restart in the Covid era, there has been a noticeable detach, a slowly widening gap between the positive words and dreaming aspirations of the club – its players, manager and ownership - and the frustrated mutters on the terraces, or the sarcastic chimes of social media.

There has always been a natural pragmatic streak running through Bolton’s traditional support, a shoulder-shrugging defence mechanism honed on misty days watching from the cold, concrete expanses of Burnden Park, being crowded out by a supermarket and then eventually replaced by one, watching paint fade, wood bleach, and seeing a golden era disappear into the distance.

A younger generation were re-energised by the Premier League adventure, Big Sam’s Galacticos, but they have now grown up and sampled hard times of their own. We are only five years removed from one of the most severe and complicated administrations English football has ever seen, and the rush to return to the better times has created a pressure for success which has not been felt for some time.

Older fans have seen this story unfold before. Phil Neal's talented team of the late eighties and early nineties knocked on the door of promotion at this level before wilting under the strain and nobody is in a rush to see it happen again.

Wanderers have spent only 18 seasons outside the top two divisions in their entire history and it is a fact that Evatt is now in the midst of his fifth, bringing him level with Neal. It is also true that the last two seasons at this club have ended with failure on the big stage.

But 2025 promises to be the neck of the bottle, the nexus at which the promises, hopes and tensions all meet. Evatt’s team must deliver what supporters have craved for some time, promotion, or consider the consequences.

This has been a year of rapturous highs and crushing lows. Fans partied on the pitch as if promotion was all-but sealed in May after the two-legged play-off semi-final win against Barnsley, players swigged from beer bottles, barely a thought given for the final hurdle which would send Bolton crashing face-first into the dirt as Oxford United jogged to the finishing line at Wembley.

It would be a crying shame if that dire 90-minute no-show came to encapsulate Evatt and the team he has built, for there have been some truly good times, moments when the fluid possession-based football looked like it could shine at a higher level and Brand Evatt was fashionable.

As one fan put it recently to me: “One minute they are Barcelona, the next they are Bolton Lads and Girls Club” - but, alas, there was not nearly enough Catalan flair in what we saw for most of the calendar year. In all, Bolton won 20 of their 44 regular league games, a total that would suffice for some sides, but not for this one.

Those low moments – the ones which evoked understandable displays of anger on the terraces along with the most repulsive and thoughtless online reaction – would occur more frequently in 2024. Losses felt heavier against clubs like Derby or Birmingham at the top end of the league, local rivals like Wigan or Stockport, and others were just undefendable, like the home pounding against Huddersfield.

Between those sobering jolts there were better performances, the trouble was that with each clobber to the senses they became harder and harder to recall. The better times gradually got swallowed up and dissolved in the bilious calls for change.

Five goal victories against Reading and Oxford in the regular 2023/24 season felt important, the first-leg win at Oakwell as tactically well-judged as any game Bolton have been involved in for years, and more recently the late winners against Peterborough and Blackpool reminded us that not everything has been doom and gloom.

The trouble is, it is impossible to guess which emotion is coming next. And that trend continued to the bitter end, too, with the Whites signing off for 2024 with a comfortable 3-0 win against Lincoln City, just a few days after stinking up the joint against Barnsley on Boxing Day.

Considering Bolton were second in the table and just a couple of points behind Portsmouth on January 1, with a game in hand, it is impossible to argue that they have not taken a big backward step. Evatt has been locked in a battle – both with the local media and, at times, his own club’s supporters, to provide context, and ask for more nuanced judgement than the blame being laid squarely at his door. And it is only fair to examine some of those factors too.

Injuries have limited how often he could name his best team. At the start of the year, the absences of Nathan Baxter and Dion Charles were damaging, and equally Ricardo Santos’s inability to shake off a calf problem which hampered his form in the final few weeks, and not least the unforgiving play-off final itself.

Fitness issues spilled over, affected pre-season, struck once again when Wanderers started afresh in 2024/25. Before long the sympathy ran out, and pertinent questions began to be asked about the thoroughness of the recruitment process, preparation and training methods. Football fans will always demand a reason for failure, even though one isn’t always easy to identify.

Evatt has felt on several occasions that the post-Wembley criticism stepped over the mark. In fairness, he is not alone, and many of the players have also expressed their issues with some of the harshest judgements, some of which reflect the darker, unappealing mood of modern fandom.

But by the time Bolton had slumped to 21st place in League One after the 4-0 home defeat against Huddersfield in September, those requests for a fair crack of the whip fell largely on deaf ears. What had been a loud minority started to become a louder majority, and the club faced another big call.

Discussions took place between the board and Evatt, and it was decided he would continue. Form did pick up. Wanderers clawed their way up to the fringes of the play-off picture again, they had a night out at Arsenal in the Carabao Cup which ended in heavy defeat but at least reminded everyone of the luxuries they had experienced not that long ago.

But the nagging doubts remained: Could Evatt’s team win the games that really matter? It is fine putting four past lesser lights like Northampton and Stevenage but would the gameplan still work against the best that League One had to offer?

After the play-off final Evatt had embarked on a spot of soul searching and concluded that the 3-5-2 system he used almost exclusively that season was in need of an update, or at least a back-up. The switch to 3-4-3 was, in truth, a disaster. And when he reverted back to the tried and trusted post-Huddersfield, his rationale had been that such sweeping changes had not been necessary after all.

Months later, and with the inconsistency creeping in once more, calls for tactical change – or at least variation - are increasing in volume once again.

The 3-4-3 has emerged as an alternative, even been put some good use away from home, but the feeling that Wanderers are now experiencing some of the same issues with predictability they did at the start of the year is unavoidable.

Evatt has, for a few weeks, looked forward to January as an opportunity to improve his starting 11 and, using his own words, ‘move the needle’.

Signings made over the summer have provided varying degrees of impact, but none can be entirely regarded as successful. Szabi Schon has done enough to get back into Hungary’s good books but is still finding his way in English football, John McAtee has developed a rapport with the fans but struggled to produce his best on the pitch, Jordi Osei-Tutu has impressed when fit, Luke Southwood, Jay Matete and Klaidi Lolos have been solid enough in the game time they have been given, while others like Chris Forino and Scott Arfield have not got started at all.

Evatt has been backed with his biggest playing budget to date – not in the same league as Birmingham, Wrexham or Huddersfield – but one which he knows should be doing better.

Now the fifth longest-serving manager in the top four divisions, Evatt has received more vocal support from the board at a time when the easier PR move might have been to step back and make changes. And the ownership group also seem prepared to make more money available for signings in January.

This is being done with the logic that Bolton are still in the hunt for promotion, and they are, even if their case is far less convincing than many supporters would like.

Evatt feels his record with Bolton warrants the show of patience, debates continue over win percentages and what constitutes success at a level of football which still feels foreign to Bolton Wanderers for fans young and old.

The team remains hard to define, impossible to predict. And all the while the stakes get higher, the voices louder.