RECRUITMENT has been made the number one priority at Wanderers – and Ian Evatt does not expect a difficult task selling the club to would-be signings.

The newly installed head coach confirmed he has already begun sounding out potential targets but is keen to keep his transfer plans under wraps, for now.

It was announced yesterday that Ali Crawford has been re-signed to the club, and a few more of last season’s squad are also expected to get offers next week.

And though he is only a few days into the job, Evatt is happy to have hit the ground running.

“We’re always looking,” he told The Bolton News. “I can’t say too much but there are conversations going on behind the scenes. I think things can happen quite quickly.

“This club sells itself. Not only the facilities but the way we want to play.

“I very much want to speak to players and sell the dream, sell the vision of how we see things moving forward and if that doesn’t excite you as a player then you’re not for us. You are not the right character, anyway.

“We are having those conversations with players right now with players who we think can get us back up the divisions and up the pyramid.”

On the other side of the recruitment equation is head of football operations, Tobias Phoenix, who has been working throughout the lockdown on establishing a list of potential targets.

He will now work with Evatt over the coming weeks to see which players best suit his tactical framework on a position-by-position basis.

“I have been absolutely flat out on recruitment,” he said. “We used the opportunity over lockdown to be as forward as we possibly can in our processes.

“The beauty of bringing Ian to the club is that he sees things the way I do. But he sees them from a professional’s point of view. I can’t do what he does. I have a basic idea of what I want it to look like, as has the board, as has Peter Kenyon, and Ian takes that on and turns it into something beautiful on a Saturday.

“The type of players we want to bring to the club are the same ones that Ian likes. He and I are very much synchronised in our thinking on how we see the players, how we see the blueprint of Bolton Wanderers, and how we see Saturday from 3pm, going forwards.”