IAN Evatt maintains his ‘experimental’ approach to the FA Cup was not all bad news.

While the club bowed out of the competition at the first round stage for the fourth year in a row, the Bolton boss insists there he picked up some valuable information from defeat against Barnsley.

Starting with a 4-3-3 formation, with Dapo Afolayan and Kieran Sadlier either side of central striker Dion Charles, Wanderers fell two goals behind inside the opening 33 minutes.

“It has just been a bit of a theme of the last month really that we don’t score first and we need to score first,” he said. “This week we changed things, we tried to have a look at a different shape.

“We have obviously taken the cup seriously because we worked really hard on this shape, and we picked a really strong team.

“We saw things that worked really well in that shape today, but other things that didn’t work so well and we need to find a mix of having that attacking prowess and numbers at the top end of the pitch, but also having that compactness, counter-press and press and the way we’re structured behind the ball and today in the 4-3-3, I thought we were a bit open defensively, especially in transition.

“But second half, the players didn’t know when they were beat and they had a right go and we all thought that it might come, and it didn’t. But now we have to reset, refresh and we’ve got a really big month in the league coming up so we’re concentrating on that, which isn’t a bad thing.”

Explaining his decision to start with a new shape, Evatt felt that Afolayan and Sadlier had been unable to play in their preferred position from the start of games for much of the season.

“Some players have been affected by the shape and Dapo and Sads are two of those players that have to find positions in a 3-5-2 or a 3-4-1-2. We decided to try and get another string to our bow by working and developing a 4-3-3 and it gets those two in their positions that they want and like to play in,” he said.

“I saw glimpses first half of what they can do and I thought with the ball, we were okay then. We looked a bit open in transition in particular and they capitalised. Second half we looked a lot more solid and it’s only when we put the two more physical forwards on that we started to play a bit more back to front, more direct, and they were sinking in and trying to defend a lead and we didn’t manage to pull it back.

“But there’s loads of things that I think we need to improve on from today and from this last month. Still very much a work in progress and it’s a long old football season and there’s lots of football to be played.”

Wanderers return to league action at Cambridge United next weekend hoping to retain their current place among the play-off contenders.

October’s form was hit-and-miss but Evatt insists there is no cause for alarm.

“We need to improve,” he said, “But it is not doom and gloom, we are in a much better position than what we were at this stage last season. We are in the top six, but we want and need to do better. There’s no denying that.

“We know we can be a lot better than what we’ve shown this last month and we’ve still got results, so that’s not a bad thing. But we want to get back to performance levels because I believe our philosophy, brand and identity is if we perform well and that we do the things that we train and coach them to do, then we get football results and we haven’t really done that so well the last month but this month gives us an opportunity to get back on the grass, work really hard and get back to those performance levels that we showed earlier on in the season.”