Wanderers moved on to 50 points with victory against Charlton Athletic on Saturday - and are keeping pace with some of their most successful campaigns of the last half century too.

Ian Evatt’s side reached the milestone in their 29th game of the season, with only Phil Parkinson’s promotion-winning team of 2016/17 managing it faster in the last 25 years.

The modern day Wanderers may be encouraged to know that on the eight occasions that the club has hit 50 points before the 30-game marker in the last half-century, they have achieved promotion four times.

The first two occasions were in the mid-seventies before the introduction of the play-offs, with Ian Greaves’ side having to wait patiently until 1977/78 to finally reach Division One.

The third was in 1990/91 after Phil Neal’s team went on a club record unbeaten run of 23 games, only to fall short against Tranmere Rovers at Wembley.

The Bolton News:

Last season Wanderers spent just one solitary week inside the top six and hit the 50-point marker after 34 games with a 3-1 home win against Lincoln City.

This time around the Whites have spent just seven weeks outside the play-off positions and have been placed fifth for 11 of the last 12 rounds of games.

Consistency has been easier to come by, with manager Evatt putting the improvement partly down to a deeper squad but also a more robust tactical structure which was brought in during pre-season.

“You look back to the summer and the hard work we did improving out-of-possession and I do think that is bearing fruit for us now,” he told The Bolton News.

“We are a difficult side to beat and when you look back at the games we have lost this season there hasn’t been a team we have come up against that we felt blew us off the park. We have been in every single game.

“People will look at the record against the top six - and I agree, we could do with more wins and fewer draws in those games - but I still think about games like Plymouth home and away, Derby at home, that mad five minutes against Sheffield Wednesday at home, they are all times where I felt we should have had more than we got.

“Of course, that’s my job and our job as a team to make sure we are coming up with results in those games. We don’t want to be talking about ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ because we have raised the bar this season and we know exactly where we want to be.”

Bolton are currently averaging 1.72 points per game, which if that trend continues to the end of the season would leave them with 79 points, which would ordinarily be ample for play-off qualification but would have only guaranteed them eighth spot last term.

The points spread across the division has been more even this season, thus making the likely target lower.

“We have set targets on where we want to be,” said club skipper Ricardo Santos. “The important thing is to not look too far ahead.”