IAN Evatt is ready to return to football and says he will do so a “better manager” for his time with Bolton Wanderers.
Getting on for nine months since he left the Toughsheet Stadium with a record of 130 wins from his 261 games in charge of Bolton, the 43-year-old has taken stock of his time with the club.
Evatt severed ties with the Whites after four-and-a-half years in charge back in January, having led his side to the play-off final the previous season.
Speaking to The Football League Paper, Evatt admitted that the time was right to step away.
“It was time,” he said. “When I left I think we were still only three points off the play-offs but I felt like I needed a break.
“I’m really pleased that the board supported me with that because sometimes you just need to refresh yourself and give yourself time to improve and go again.
“It’s the first break I have had in 27 years in football and it has been nice to have time at home and to be able to focus on just being a dad to my kids.
“And when I reflect on the job I did with Bolton, I’m proud of the job I did. Of course, there is some lingering frustration because I truly believe we should have got promoted but I have learned from that, and I am a better manager for it.
“Now I am ready to come back, which is another double-edged sword, really.
“I don’t feel at all comfortable sitting here and waiting for someone to fall. That doesn’t sit right with me.
“But that’s the nature of the industry we are in and if somebody wants a manager who can build an identity and a philosophy then I’ll be ready.”
Evatt has been strongly linked with the vacant job at Blackpool, a club where he spent some of the best days of his playing career, helping them into the Premier League in 2010.
Ian Holoway’s side achieved promotion on a shoestring budget and came within a whisker of avoiding relegation.
Fifteen years on, Evatt reflected on the differences between that team and those he has worked with as a manager at Chesterfield, Barrow and Bolton.
Having invested heavily in data-driven analytics in his time at the Whites helm, he admits the approach conflicted with the one he experienced as a player at Bloomfield Road.
“Analytics are great,” he said. “Applied in the right way they are certainly more of a help than a hindrance. But the level of coaching has gone through the roof and that’s a double-edged sword.
“I played in a lot of teams where we didn’t have different strategies. Our shape in build-up, our shape in the middle third. What are your pressing strategies? How many men enter the box? How then do we have control positions behind the ball to make sure that we win the next phase?
“We never really spoke about any of those things in the way we do now. We had a set-up and away we went.
“But what that did was make us think for ourselves and try and understand the game so we could make in-game decisions. We had to think on our feet.
“Now that’s far less prevalent. Players are more reliant on instructions – if the ball is here, I need to be here. If my opponent does this, I need to do that.
“The problem is, you can plan all week and if the opponent does something different on a Saturday – or changes mid-game – then the players have to figure that out for themselves. The manager only has an influence for 10 minutes at half time, by which time the game might be over.
“As I said, I think that was one of the great strengths of that Blackpool team, that freedom Ian (Holloway) gave us and the ability to make our own decisions. It is definitely something that the data has taken away.”
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