A FIRST defeat since March will not have Ian Evatt poring over his grand plan at Sunday dinner, nor should it shake optimism that this can be a positive season at Wanderers – but that is not to say the Bolton boss should not take notes.

In the 14 games since Plymouth Argyle last bested the Whites there has not been an opponent as organised nor canny as Wednesday, who claimed three points with a sniper’s accuracy and efficiency at the UniBol.

The Owls may well be a useful yardstick to what is required from Bolton if they are to get into the top six this time around. On this particular showing they were well short – but the team is capable of more and had shown as much during their first four games.

At the crux of this defeat, two errors. The first from the otherwise excellent Liverpool loanee, Conor Bradley, who missed when clean through on David Stockdale’s goal having seized on a poor pass from Tyreeq Bakinson.

Moments later, Ricardo Santos played an equally thoughtless ball back to James Trafford, which had the panicked keeper rushing to clear off his own line. Wanderers failed to react quickly enough and Barry Bannan – once of this parish – set up George Byers for an opening goal.

Every game will have a ‘what if’ moment, and we could very well have been focusing on Bakinson’s error above that of Santos. But Wednesday punished it to the full, rocking Bolton’s confidence to the degree that they woke up two minutes later two goals behind.

Liam Palmer added the second, a dazed Bolton defence still sleep-walking after conceding the first, and the visitors had a lead they could maintain comfortably with one of the smartest defensive performances we have seen in some time.

Either side of the ‘mad five minutes’ Wanderers had been decent, if not spectacular. They moved the ball in fits and starts, dropping too often into that lateral pattern which allows opposing defences to sit tight and feel secure.

This was the side that had started the sun-sapping game at Port Vale a week earlier but it seems a cheap excuse to blame fatigue for any shortcoming. Evatt made five changes from the team which had beaten Morecambe, and perversely there is also a section of the fanbase who would claim that was in itself a gamble.

Squad rotation does not sit well with some, but it is fair to say the complaints only seem to stack up in volume after a defeat.

Addressing Santos’s state of mind could be the biggest issue Evatt and his coaching staff have to tackle in the next few days, as this has been a difficult patch for the Wanderers skipper.

Having picked up an injury at the end of last season, the defender returned with work to catch-up during the summer. A painful foot problem – plantar fasciitis – has also bugged him over the first few games.

Were that not enough, his farcical red card at Port Vale left him watching the Morecambe game from the stands. And with deputy, Will Aimson, putting in an impressive performance there was an added element of pressure on Santos as he returned immediately to the starting line-up, backed by his manager’s hubristic view that he was the best centre-half playing outside the Premier League.

For the opening half an hour his performance was indeed imperious. But one daft pass, followed up by some soft defending as the ball actually made its way into the net via Bannan and Byers, should not have been enough to send Santos and his team south.

Wanderers allowed themselves to become vulnerable and architect extraordinaire Bannan wasted no time in getting Wednesday back on the attack to score a second.

From there, every misplaced pass, each mis-control, brought an audible groan of concern from the 22,000-plus crowd – Bolton’s fifth biggest at this level of football.

Wednesday’s 5,000 lapped up a second half played primarily in the Owls’ half and had Josh Windass not contrived to head over the bar from five yards out, the party would have started even earlier.

Wanderers toiled. Jack Iredale brought a good save out of David Stockdale with a free kick, Dapo Afolayan ducked and weaved but never quite got a good sight of goal. The introduction of Jon Dadi Bodvarsson and Dion Charles from the bench added a bit more energy – more notes for Evatt to take – yet Wednesday’s defence seemed happy to soak up the pressure.

The South Yorkshiremen also gobbled up any free seconds with some darkly delicious gamesmanship. Five minutes were added on by referee Charles Breakspear, mercifully a peripheral character in the game, but the ball hardly seemed to be in play during the second half as the Owls saw out the result masterfully.

Evatt and his vice-captain Gethin Jones said the right things after the final whistle, insisted there would be no hangover from one negative result in a long line of positives. And with any luck they are right.

Tuesday’s game against Aston Villa is frosting atop the cake. With little pressure on them, Wanderers will more than likely enjoy testing themselves against Steven Gerrard’s Premier League men and may hold out some hope of causing an upset.

Lying in wait some 300 miles south, however, Plymouth Argyle have a free week to prepare at Home Park as they look for a repeat of last season’s rain-soaked rampage.

It was in Devon, Sarcevic fall-out and all, that Evatt and his team really started to encounter problems last year, effectively stunting their promotion bid. The Bolton boss will desperately want to show that his team has strengthened, evolved, and so the next couple of days at Lostock could be more crucial than we think.