AARON Collins has shot to the top of Wanderers’ scoring charts – but Ian Evatt believes his striker is capable of firing even higher in the future.

The Welshman has netted in his last three games to reach 12 for the season, even nudging ahead of Bolton’s goalscoring mainstay Dion Charles.

But while Collins remains on course to match his team-mate’s achievement over the past two season and reach the 20-goal marker, his manager has challenged him to find more consistency in front of goal, elevating his game further.

The 27-year-old has scored 60 times in 174 appearances over the last four years at Bolton and Bristol Rovers and developed a reputation for producing goals at the more spectacular end of the scale.

And Evatt feels with the right guidance, the man he brought to the club for £750,000 last January can produce more.

“He wants more goals, which is great, that is the main thing for me,” he told The Bolton News. “He is a really good player but what we need to do with him is make the moments more consistent because he is capable of the really special ones.

“If we can make those more consistent then the world’s his oyster because he has got serious talents and serious rockets on both feet, which is a rare talent to have.”

Collins has forged his most productive partnership with summer arrival John McAtee, and Evatt has been pleased with the way the pairing has developed since playing them both up front.

“Those two have got a good relationship off the pitch and I think that translates on the pitch as well,” he said. “John is really important player for us and the two work well together.”

Evatt felt last weekend’s win at Exeter was an important step forward, his team showing character to win the game late on with Collins and Aaron Morley scoring the crucial goals.

Bolton have fought back to claim 10 points this season after conceding the first goal, a total bettered by three sides – Birmingham City (16), Wycombe (13) and Lincoln City (11) in League One.

Avoiding the sort of defensive errors which led to goals at Exeter and Mansfield in recent weeks is something Evatt is keen to address, although his players’ response was a source of pride at St James Park.

“Sometimes it doesn’t take the manager to know that the goal, falling behind, or losing that game on Wednesday (at Mansfield) was unacceptable for us, especially when we had been dominant,” he said.

“We want better and we have to do better but to do that we must stop making those crucial, silly errors out of the blue when we are in complete control of the game.

“We will continue to work on it. We have talked about being resilient and it doesn’t get talked about too much but we are resilient, we find a way to respond and we responded again.

“When you do concede we all feel like ‘here we go again’ but we shouldn’t, on the back of conceding such a really poor goal.

“Sometimes you need to take a bit of responsibility, it isn’t about the opposition, the nay-sayers, the non-believers, this is all about us. And we know as a group we need to do better with that.”