Ian Evatt is still ready to pull Wanderers’ strings despite starting a three-match touchline ban, writes Pete Oliver.
The Whites’ boss won’t be in the dug-out for Saturday’s visit of Burton Albion or Wanderers’ following two fixtures after being shown a red card in his side’s 2-2 draw with Shrewsbury Town a fortnight ago.
He will take another vantage point in the Toughsheet Community Stadium as Wanderers’ aim to continue their climb up the table against the Brewers.
But Evatt is still able to have access to the dressings room and communicate with his staff on the bench as he looks to oversee a fourth win in five league games.
“It isn't ideal and I apologised for what happened,” said the boss after admitting an FA charge. “With everything there is context to it but it's something I need to learn from. The punishment is the punishment. I have to accept it, I will accept it, and now I have to make sure I prepare the players correctly.
“The only thing that will change is not being stood there live in the game, but I can still impact it from where I will be positioned; in fact probably impact it more because I’ll have a better tactical view.
“Before the game, half-time, post-game it's the same me. It's just important everyone gets clarity of what's expected, who's going to be standing up, who's giving information, who am I giving the information to, who's relaying that information to the players, the players understanding that they can't look over and see me for information but they’re going to get my information from a different source. It’s just making sure everyone is on the same page.”
Wanderers return from an international break to launch a busy run of four league games before the end of the month ahead of the start of their FA Cup campaign at Walsall.
New-look Burton are yet to win in the league this season and Evatt wants his side to come quickly out of the blocks to try and make a winning start to the next phase of their campaign.
He added: “In the last four league games we ‘ve won three of them, scored lots of goals ended with a good second-half against Shrewsbury, so we're in pretty good form.
“The players have trained exceptionally well this week. As a manager you normally get a feel for when they're in a good place and I do think they are. We know we've got a difficult week coming up but that starts with Burton and we’re looking no further than that.
“It's very important, it's vital in fact, that we start fast and get the crowd up like we have of late and get that first goal which is crucial to us. It helps us relax and makes the other team open up a little bit more and we can expose that.
“We're expecting a tough game. They've completely changed their style of play. They’re an expansive team, an in-possession team now and build right from the back and are brave and courageous in what they do and we need to be ready for that.”
Wanderers have a couple of injury concerns and as well as checking on goalkeeper Nathan Baxter, who missed his first league game of the season a fortnight ago, are also trying to ascertain the full extent of a problem experienced by defender Eoin Toal on international duty with Northern Ireland.
That took some of the edge of an otherwise positive break which saw Josh Sheehan and Dion Charles shine for their countries and leaves Wanderers’ potentially short in the defensive department.
“It's great that Northern Ireland did well in both games and Josh was man of the match (for Wales) and has come back super-confident and was amazing in training today,” said Evatt.
“But there's a huge question mark about Toally at the moment and what that injury is and what it looks like. We're doing our best to investigate, that's all I can say really. It's clearly a head or neck issue but we can't really label what it is yet. We're just doing all we can to do our investigations to see what we think it is.
“It has stretched us, there's no doubt about that. We're hopeful that Gethin (Jones) and Will (Forrester), who are back in training now, will get up to speed very quickly and give us some more options there. We don't think this injury to Toally is significant. There's a chance he could be available on Saturday but at the moment we're still investigating.”