IAN Evatt is confident that Wanderers will achieve lift-off once Eoin Doyle gets off the mark.

After a tough start to his managerial career at the UniBol, the Whites head coach is backing his most high-profile summer signing to be a catalyst for reform.

Doyle scored 26 goals for Swindon in League Two last season but has drawn a blank in Bolton’s first three games, all of which have ended in defeat.

Evatt has faith the Irishman’s luck will change, and that it will inspire his team.

“I have no doubts in my mind that Eoin will score 20-plus this season,” he said. “I think the team need to see him scoring. He needs it for himself but everyone else needs it just to give them a lift.

“It doesn’t matter how. It can hit his backside, I don’t really care. I would like him to score for him – but I’d like us to score first because then I think we’d express ourselves more.”

Evatt had asked Doyle and his strike partner Nathan Delfouneso to stay closer to goal after the Carabao Cup defeat to Bradford.

And though the Bolton boss believes his strikers have heeded his advice, the supply line is still far from his liking.

“We got it a little bit more from him and he had a great opportunity first half,” he said. “Second half the ball was falling and dropping around but a lot of it was being blocked, we weren’t quite getting the rub of the green.

“Final third entries – the law of averages say that if you keep on doing it you’ll score goals sooner rather than later. We need to work harder on that and do better when we get into the final third.

“Other than probably the Wigan game, where we changed it a lot, this is probably the game where I can see the most.

“I think I can see what is wrong. We will know next Saturday whether I am right or not because next week we’ll have to work really hard.

“In my own mind I can see clearly what is wrong and I know how to fix it. That’s football.”