MARK Beevers reckons Wanderers’ promotion credentials will be better assessed on a cold Tuesday night in January than after their perfect summer start.

The big defender knows the course and distance having gone all the way to Wembley with Millwall in the play-offs last season, only to suffer a narrow defeat to his home-town club Barnsley.

And though he is not surprised the Whites have made a 100 per cent start to the campaign after four games, he is urging fans to check their expectations for the time being.

“It’s a promising start but we can’t get ahead of ourselves,” he told The Bolton News.

“There will be cold Tuesday nights in December and January where we all have to step up and play through the pain. They are the big games.

“The lads have bonded really well. I was part of a team that had a great understanding at Millwall last season and we went all the way to the play-off final, but unfortunately couldn’t get over the line.

“I always knew the squad was capable of this. Any outsider looking in can see the quality of the squad we’ve got, and that we should be up there.

“We’ve got no God-given right, we have to work at it. We are aware of that.

“But this kind of start hasn’t come as any shock to me at all, and hopefully it can go on for a bit longer yet.”

Free agent Beevers was one of the first players targeted by Phil Parkinson after his arrival as manager and picked Wanderers ahead of a string of other options in the Championship and League One.

Above all others Beevers has summed up the team’s no-nonsense approach under the new boss. And the big centre half feels the whole squad has responded to a more structure, disciplined environment created in the camp this season.

“The lads can have banter at the right time, we know that, but what work has been put in front of us we get through,” he said.

“The training sessions have been thorough and tough but the results are there to see.

“The manager puts the rules and the foundations of what he wants to do down and it’s up to us as players to take them on board. I think the lads have done that really well so far.”

The last time Wanderers won four consecutive games at the start of the season, Everton’s Dixie Dean was the darling of English football and an eight-year-old Nat Lofthouse was shimmying up the drainpipe at Burnden Park to see his heroes Ray Westwood, Harry Goslin and Jack Milsom in action.

Bit by bit, statistic by statistic, the modern-day Whites are rebuilding the reputation which was damaged so badly during last season. And after their best return for 82 years, Beevers is hoping for more.

“We couldn’t really have asked for a better start,” the defender said. “We’d waited a long time for an away win and got one at Wimbledon. We’ve even managed to crush that song the fans sing about us not winning away.

“The manager mentioned to us before the game that we had a chance to make a bit of history and it’s a long time since Bolton started a season like this.

“A team gets their confidence, first and foremost, from being solid at the back. If you can do that, the team can go forward and do what they need to in the final third.

“There are some real talents at this club and there’s no reason we can’t turn teams over every single week. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”