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James Trafford is keeping his feet on the ground despite a dream start to his Wanderers career.
The 19-year-old has kept clean sheets in his first four matches for the Whites – something no other goalkeeper has done in the club’s history.
But Trafford is determined to keep improving in the coming weeks as he aims to help Bolton climb the League One table.
“I am learning on the job. I wanted to take this step out and play men’s football,” said the goalkeeper.
“I could easily have sat there at City, maybe gone abroad, and it might have been nicer. It wouldn’t have been as windy!
“Even though that first loan at Accrington didn’t go as I wanted, I needed to stay out of my comfort zone. There is no such thing as a bad experience in footy. You learn from it all.
“I won’t say the teams but I could have played in Holland, Spain and France, second divisions.
“Everyone knows the Premier League is the best in the world and I wanted to develop in England because I want it to eventually lead to playing in the Premier League.”
Trafford spent the first half of the season on loan at Accrington, making 11 appearances before losing his place to Toby Savin.
The goalkeeper admits he is much happier at Bolton and is keen to push on from his recent performances.
He added: “(City) wanted me to give it the best shot I could, work hard, develop and keep an attitude of a top Premier League goalkeeper.
“Finish one day, start the next one, don’t look too far ahead. I just want to keep sustaining this and playing well.
“I am so much happier now than I was at Accy and that has made me sharper. I didn’t put four clean sheets together there but I have now and things are working out great at the moment.”
Trafford admits competitive matches in the Football League are a big change from youth football, where the aim is primarily to learn and develop.
“Goalkeeping is essentially a sport inside a sport,” he said. “I’m close with all the staff at City through the ages but coming through it has always been ‘develop, develop, develop’ - even at 1-0 up they are on top of you, keeping playing it out.
“Here I want to develop and the more you play the more chance you have to progress but it is really about results. We would happily take a 1-0 and get battered all games.
“This is more results based than coming through the academy. Training is more about the opposition and the next game we have coming up.”
The youngster had the opportunity to train with Ederson before heading to the UniBol, and insists he learned a lot from the Brazilian goalkeeper.
“I saw loads of him last year in training and it was almost a positive that games were played behind closed doors because I could see everything and pick things up,” Trafford added.
“He is at it 100 per cent every day and he is so sharp going into the day of a game.
“He is so calm and I heard on a podcast that the lower your heart rate is, the less chance of you doing anything erratic, like mistakes. I have tried to put that into my game and be calmer.
“If you don’t do something right then you just have to stick to your process. I have been calm at Bolton - the big test is sustaining it.
“The last time I played four games on the spin was the start of October and it was all about getting my head set.”
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