Evatt Aims To Put Record Straight

Ian Evatt Northampton

Wanderers are ready to hit the road as they look to keep racking up the points to maintain their League One momentum.

The Whites go to Wycombe Wanderers on Tuesday night before heading south again on Saturday to face Charlton Athletic.

Ian Evatt’s men – and the fans who are able to be at both fixtures – will clock up close to 900 miles over the combined visits to Adams Park and The Valley.

But in-form Wanderers travel with renewed impetus behind them after two early goals against Northampton Town on Saturday set up a third win in four league games to climb back up to fourth place in the table.

“To achieve the ambitions we’ve set ourselves this season we have to pick up points away from home and win away from home."
Ian Evatt

“We've had a good start,” said Evatt. “The top two teams; things are going for them at the moment. We've just got to concentrate on ourselves and keep going. At the moment we're picking up points, we’re winning games and we're in good shape.

“It was a very important win on Saturday. To hit the performance level for 90 minutes that we showed in the first half would take something really special and that's what we're working towards.

“The most important thing is that we won the game, which we did, and now we focus on a difficult week of travelling and away games and two very good teams to face.

“To achieve the ambitions we’ve set ourselves this season we have to pick up points away from home and win away from home.

“Two long away days back-to-back isn't ideal, but the Board are magnificent in the way they allow us to prepare. We will go down there today (Monday), train again in the morning and make sure we're ready for the game tomorrow night.”

Wanderers have played only four times away from home so far this term and have a decent record of two wins and a draw.

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Wycombe flag

The Whites are yet to take a point at Wycombe in three previous trips – including the visit in August, 2019 as the club teetered on the brink before the current owners stepped in to save the day.

But both defeats under Evatt have been by the slenderest of margins and the Wanderers’ boss is looking to re-write history to stay above the Chairboys in the table and potentially narrow the gap on Oxford and Portsmouth in the automatic promotion slots.

“We haven't got the best record at Wycombe, so we'd like to put that straight,” Evatt added.

“There's no more difficult place to go and we know what's coming, even though it's a change of manager. Matt (Bloomfield) spent a lot of time and a lot of years under Gareth (Ainsworth) and there are a lot of similarities.

“They are very effective and difficult to play against and we have to be ready for that, but also show what we can do and play our game and play our way. We’re going there with confidence and will try and get the right result.

“The two times I've been there we've lost the games 1-0. We were more than competitive in both games and probably should have got a result there last year.

“We know these games are always tight. We know they’re competitive and we need to make sure we come out on the right side of it.”

Watch the manager’s full pre-match interview on Wanderers TV and if you can’t get to Wycombe, you can watch the full match live on Wanderers TV with a £10 match available to buy HERE

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