WANDERERS have dragged themselves into promotion contention - and Shaun Miller believes they have the firepower to stay there.

Ian Evatt’s latecomers moved to within four points of the play-offs with a 1-0 win against Southend United, their third victory on the spin.

Miller did the damage with his first league goal for Bolton on the same week he completed a return from a serious thigh injury picked up in the club’s last purple patch, in November.

Back then, four straight league wins lifted the Whites as high as ninth, but after the absentees began to mount up the good form quickly tailed off.

Miller believes Evatt’s squad and the general belief in the camp is much stronger this time around.

“I think you can see from the comebacks we have made recently that there is a togetherness in the team, we genuinely believe we can get up there,” he said.

“We went on a similar run earlier in the season but it fell away. I think we’re better placed to kick on now.

“From the start of the season we were favourites going into games but the form didn’t back that up. It was a flip reversal of what we wanted, really.

“We know what happened. I think we are stronger now. And if we keep stacking up the points we’ll move up the league.

“There have been a few players going out and a few coming in since then but there’s a good togetherness with us now and we really believe in ourselves and as a squad. We have great confidence going into the latter part of the season.”

Wanderers fought for six points on the road at Mansfield and Southend on two difficult playing surfaces so may welcome a return to home turf for the visits of Scunthorpe and Barrow.

Improving form is bringing with it different pressures for Evatt’s men but Miller reckons confidence in the camp is pitched just right.

“Pitches in the last two games have been really tough but we have never looked at a game and thought ‘this is going to be easy’ – I don’t think you can in this league,” he said.

“We went to Southend knowing it was going to be tough and managed to grind out a win. Now we go into Tuesday night with great belief that we can keep this going.

“It’ll be a tough one against Scunthorpe. It was a close game there earlier in the season, a 1-0, and they have won again today.

“We cannot go into any game thinking we’ll roll teams over. It is so competitive and we need to keep focus.”