IAN Evatt says he will be doing everything possible to ensure his Wanderers attack sharpens up this season.

The Bolton boss has made it one of his chief priories this summer to work with his attacking players to improve the conversion of chances created.

Last season, Eoin Doyle led the line with 19 goals, but the Whites were left clinging on to narrow leads too often for the manager’s liking.

Amadou Bakayoko and Xavier Amaechi have been added to the front line this summer, with Dapo Afolayan also making his loan move permanent.

But Evatt believes there is still plenty of scope for improvement after watching the first few friendly encounters – and has vowed to work hard on the training ground to get the best out of his group.

“There were a lot of 1-0 games last season but one thing I will say is that a lot of those games should not have been 1-0,” he told The Bolton News. “We know we have to be more ruthless and clinical in the final third and that is why we have brought in some of the players we in that area of the pitch. We have to continue to create.

“I saw the stats against Longridge – and I know we can say what we want about the standard of opposition – but we had 44 shots in 90 minutes. Our expected goals was 13, but we scored three.

“We have to be better than that. It isn’t as if we are not creating outstanding chances, we just have to improve. “It will mean hard work on the training pitch. And some of it might be psychological – it might need to be that side of the game that needs to improve, we have to look at all aspects to get the best out of our players.

“I know we need to score more but I feel like we have signed players who can help us turn more of those chances into the goals required.”

Wanderers will face Preston North End at Leyland tonight unable to name Doyle, who is self-isolating.

Dennis Politic should be clear to play, should Evatt wish to do so, after his own 10-day hiatus.

It is understood that the Whites are looking for at least one more attacking player in the remaining weeks of the transfer window, potentially on loan, to further boost their goalscoring options.

And Evatt has also not ruled out playing Doyle and Bakayoko in the same side, if the circumstances were right.

“They can 100 per cent play together because that was part of the recruitment strategy,” he said. “We needed someone who could play as a pair as well as individually.

“We just haven’t been able to do that yet, sampled changing the formation, but Baka can definitely handle it and he can also play off the right as well. He did that a lot for Coventry, so that gives us another opportunity to pair them together if we needed to.

“We will do it – we just have to wait for the chance because Eoin if off with Covid.”