Evatt: We Must Bounce Back

Ian Evatt will be looking for an immediate response from his side when they look to kick-start another unbeaten run in mid-week.

Wanderers suffered a first loss in nine games as top-six rivals Derby County extended their own impressive form with a 2-1 win at Pride Park to pull three points clear of the Whites in the play-off places.

Ian Evatt’s men couldn’t find an answer to Nathaniel Mendez-Laing’s early goal and a fine Conor Hourihane strike with 20 minutes to go until Kieran Sadlier pulled one back in stoppage time.

And Evatt will be looking for better when his side faces Forest Green Rovers at the University of Bolton Stadium on Tuesday night.

“We’ve told them exactly what went wrong and some home truths,” admitted the Wanderers’ boss.

“Regardless of what run we’ve been on, when you want to be where we want to be then you have to accept that and recognise that today we weren’t good enough and have to be better if we’re going to be challenging at the top end of this division, which we want to be.

“The main thing now is we park that, move on and make sure we win the game on Tuesday night.

“There are a lot of frustrations because we feel let ourselves down but we’ll get our heads down now and work extremely hard to make sure we win the game.

“Good teams always bounce back after a negative result and that bounce-back factor has to comes against Forest Green.”

Wanderers conceded two goals in a game for the first time since their last defeat at Shrewsbury in early December as their run of four straight clean sheets also came to an end.

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And despite an impressive full debut from loan signing Dan Nlundulu – before he tired in the second half – they rarely looked like over-turning Derby’s lead to threaten them with a first defeat since October.

“I think we dipped below our usual standards,” added Evatt, who confirmed he remains active in the search for reinforcements in the transfer market.

“They just executed their game-plan better that we did ours.

“It was a game of very few opportunities really, but we just didn’t handle or deal with their aggressive physical press.

“We didn’t ask their two centre-backs enough questions and that’s not down to the two centre-forwards. It’s about putting the ball in the right areas.

“We caused our own problems and it’s a real frustration because the game was still relatively tight.

“I do feel if we had been anything like we can be we’d have asked them a lot more questions and the score could have looked completely different.”

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