THE last game against Tranmere Rovers might be fresh in the minds of Wanderers fans, for obvious reasons; a 3-0 defeat at home to their rivals for starters, with the added element of former Bolton boss Keith Hill leaving his old club victorious.

But while Ian Evatt is determined to "put it right" this weekend, his mind isn't weighted towards what happened at the University of Bolton Stadium in November.

Instead he is more focused on the future, and getting the level of consistency he craves to climb the league.

“It’s not fresh in my mind," said Evatt about their last meeting. "All that’s fresh in my mind was the training session from today and moving on to Saturday.

"We’re talking about moving forwards now and not looking back so let’s look forward to Saturday and hopefully have the same performance that we had on the Saturday just gone."

Evatt felt his side warranted three points rather than the one they picked up against Cheltenham after stepping up their performance levels.

"Our data was the best it's been all season, we covered the most distance we have all season, all that was missing was the goals and the result but if they perform like that there's no issues from me that we'll finish a lot closer to where we want to finish than we are now," he said.

The Bolton News: Ian Evatt was pleased with his side's performance against Cheltenham Ian Evatt was pleased with his side's performance against Cheltenham

"We’ve got players returning from injury, we’ve got competition for places, it’s now about what we do in this second half of the season starting on Saturday.”

But, at the halfway stage, Evatt stopped short of saying Wanderers' season starts now.

“I’m not going to say that because we’ve said that so many times that it’s become really frustrating to me," said the Wanderers' boss.

"The most important thing is that we concentrate on ourselves and concentrate on the work we’re doing on the training pitch, go and play with freedom, play with confidence like we did do on Saturday and if we can do that this Saturday then I have firm belief that we’ll get a good result.”

And while Evatt was keen to push the previous meeting to the back of his mind, having played Tranmere relatively recently means he knows just what to expect from this weekend's opponents.

“Much of the same," he said. "I think they’re experienced, they’ve got an experienced spine of the team, obviously a manager that is motivated to beat his old club and it’s going to be a difficult challenging game.

"They all are, but if we can go there and play to the same level as what we did on Saturday we will more than match any team in this league. It’s just more about us than the opposition really."

Evatt knows consistency will be the most important factor, after falling away from the promise they showed in November. Having won five on the spin, including four in the league, they have won just once since the start of December.

“There’s lots and lots of reasons I think why we haven’t kicked on," he said. "Primarily we haven’t been good enough, it’s as simple as that so we have to keep working hard to improve which we are doing.

"I thought last Saturday was the best we’ve played all season in terms of controlling the game with possession, controlling the tempo of the game through possession, creating chances that we didn’t take but I understand that we will take because we’ve got good players at the top end of the pitch. We’ve got players returning from injury, we’ve got competition for places, it’s now about what we do in this second half of the season starting on Saturday.”