IAN Evatt has challenged his Wanderers to show they can be a team for the big occasion.

Derby County come to town tomorrow in a battle of the two pre-season favourites for a top two spot in League One.

Bolton have had a tricky fortnight in the aftermath of a heavy home defeat to Wigan Athletic and were criticised in some quarters for their performance at Burton Albion last weekend.

Evatt knows his team’s promotion credentials have been called into question but he hopes to use the pain of the derby loss to his advantage, and has urged fans to judge him and his team once the race is run in May.

“We know people will be waiting for us to trip up – that’s football. And it fuels me, it fuels the players,” he told The Bolton News.

“You should know me well enough now to know how it hurt me and the lads but we can’t make that right at this moment in time, we just have to focus on our job.

“We have to make sure we correct the course, perform consistently, and then when you look back in May we can think ‘Jeez, what happened there?’ Hopefully, that happens when we have accomplished what we want to achieve.

“We can only do that at the end of the season. I don’t know any business that judges its success or failures on a week to week basis but football seems to get that way.

“We can only be judged in the summer when we know whether we have done what we wanted to do, and until then we have to use those disappointments as fuel to go and do better.”

Wanderers’ record against ‘top six’ clubs has been mixed since their return to League One but Evatt hopes that with another season under their belt, his young squad can improve their points return against their direct rivals in the table.

“What we have tried to do is close the gap between us and the big clubs and it takes time,” he told The Bolton News. “When we first came up from League Two the gulf between the two divisions was ginormous, in my opinion. But we signed players who we wanted to polish and develop, some of them are younger and haven’t been used to playing in games with such magnitude. They will only improve with experience.

“We have had some bloody noses along the way. I’d argue the one the other week was something worse than a bloody nose, if I’m honest. But we have to believe in what we are doing and that when we perform to our level we are a good team.

“Michael Carrick said that to me before and after the game on Tuesday night, the performance at Wembley was pretty good – even though it gets forgotten about when people talk about these big games.

“We can do it, but I know we need to make sure we do it consistently.”

Wanderers expect some business to be done on deadline day, with Kieran Sadlier and Declan John potentially on their way out and a goalkeeping replacement for the injured Joel Coleman still a possibility.

“I hope it will be a straightforward day because I do like to kick back and see what everyone else is doing,” Evatt said. “It is also amazing to see the phone calls you get with players you thought would never be achievable for us. It is quite amusing, actually, we have a laugh about it.

“We’ll have a brew and a biscuit with you and keep you working away, which is always nice to see, and see how the day pans out.”