RICARDO Santos has signed a 12-month extension to his contract at Bolton Wanderers.

The big defender is now tied to the University of Bolton Stadium until the summer of 2023.

After a difficult start, Santos has steadily grown into one of the Whites’ most reliable defensive performers and has played more minutes in League Two than anyone else in the squad.

The former Peterborough United and Barnet centre-back has formed a solid partnership alongside Alex Baptiste in recent weeks to help Bolton lift themselves into play-off contention with five successive victories.

Speaking about his new deal, Santos said: “I’m happy it has finally got done. We have a good bunch of lads and I really enjoy it here.

“The gaffer and the management team believe in me a lot and I just want to keep pushing on and helping the club as best as I can.”

Wanderers boss Evatt recently said “the sky is the limit” for the 25-year-old, who arrived on a free transfer last summer.

“I’m very happy that Rico has signed a new contract,” he added. “He’s been fantastic all season for us and his improvement has been phenomenal.

“He’s becoming a real leader of the team and his consistency has been great.

”I’ve said it before that we want to keep our best players and this is a club that should be building a team around players like Rico.”

Evatt is hoping that Wanderers can start building on a successful February when they travel to face Oldham Athletic on Tuesday night.

“It’s been a good month,” he said. “That’s all it is though, a good month. We’ve got 11 more weeks to go. We have to make sure that we perform to the same levels, if not better, to achieve what we want to achieve.

“We’ve achieved nothing yet. We’re satisfied that we’ve turned the corner, but as we’ve seen before with November and how that went and then what happened afterwards, we’re not going to rest on our laurels.

“We’re hungry for more, the appetite is there, the lads have come together, the work ethic’s there, we want to do more and do better.”