MATCH REACTION: Wanderers assistant Pete Atherton on the Evatt red card incident

WANDERERS assistant coach Pete Atherton has given his opinion on Ian Evatt's red card after the final whistle in today's 2-2 home draw with Shrewsbury Town.

The Bolton coach received a straight red card from referee Declan Bourne after a personal altercation with visiting defender Morgan Feeney.

Evatt had asked the referee why more time wasn't added to the eight minutes shown by the fourth official, with stoppage time itself also including a delay in play.

Atherton spoke to the local press as EFL rules prohibit a manager from doing so if he has been sent off.

He said: “The gaffer went to the referee and asked why, if you will, no extra time was added. They were talking about it and one of their players started to get involved, they had words, the referee gave the gaffer a red and their player a yellow, so I'm not quite sure why there's red for one and yellow for the other. It wasn’t anything he said to the referee.”

Asked whether there had been contact with Feeney, Atherton added: “I obviously can't comment on that because I haven't seen the footage.”

With the Wanderers trailing by two at half-time, poor defending allowed Jordan Feeney and Jordan Shipley to give the second-bottom Shrews an unexpected lead.

Kyle Dempsey and Szabi Schon equalized with Bolton in the 61st minute but were unable to score a third goal, which would have given them their fourth consecutive league win.

Atherton said: “It was a game of two halves, unfortunately in the first half we didn't perform to the level we expected based on the two good away wins we had in the league. “We expected to be stronger and start at the beginning.

“In their position as Shrewsbury we knew they would fight and fight. We didn't just give them one leg, we gave them two. We were disappointed in the second game because we had spoken about it and we conceded a similar goal last time. We drilled it into the players' heads, but unfortunately they didn't recognize it quickly enough and didn't deal with it.

“It was very disappointing to be 2-0 up at half-time, but still we scored the early goal we needed after half-time and got the second goal. I'm a bit disappointed because we still had 30 minutes to get the winning goal.” . We huffed and puffed, had a few chances, the goalkeeper made a few good saves, but we couldn’t find the winner.”

The Wanderers were much better after half-time, which Atherton said was the only encouraging thing to take away from the afternoon.

“That was positive because it helped them progress the game and keep the momentum going, but then you also need a bit of quality and intelligent play to get the final result and the winner.”

“There's never a dull moment at Bolton, especially on the bench, but it's definitely two points down, especially after the good results we've had.”