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Josh Sheehan reckons Wanderers would try anything to get rid of their nasty habit of conceding the first goal.
The Whites have found themselves behind inside the first 25 minutes in four out of their last five games in League One.
Several tweaks have been made to pre-match preparations, from routines in the warm-up to the type of music players listen to in the dressing room.
But Welsh midfielder Sheehan is at a loss to explain why the pattern continues as it did on Saturday as Rob Street opened the scoring for Shrewsbury Town after just 87 seconds.
“Before the game we say it all the time – make sure first 10-15 minutes we stay solid. And, yeah, I can’t tell you how or why it happens. We just need to put it right, there’s no two ways about it,” he said.
“Next game we can’t go doing that because it gives you a mountain to climb. As a team we need to do something about it.
“We’ve tried to change different things, we are willing to do anything to benefit or help us. If it works we stick with it, if it doesn’t we’ll change it to win.”
The 3-2 defeat at Shrewsbury was a hard one to take for Sheehan, who was back in the starting line-up for a league game for only the second time this season.
Wanderers led 2-1 with less than 20 minutes remaining but conceded two poor goals to leave Shropshire empty handed.
“It isn’t as if they cut us open and created clear-cut chances, they had two set pieces,” he said. “We should have stopped the cross for the second one and for the third we should be doing more as a team to try and protect Traff so he has a clear route to the ball.
“We didn’t back ourselves to keep playing football, went long, played differently to the way we’d played for the first 75 minutes. I think maybe it got to us a bit because we’d been playing through them quite well to that point.
“Going long is more their game and then they started to put pressure on us and we didn’t stand up to it.”
Asked whether Shrewsbury’s physical approach had put Bolton out of kilter, he added: “That’s League One football – and that’s what teams try to do with us. They think they can get the upper hand on us that way. We have to stick together on the pitch.
“We have to do what we are good at. When we are winning we can’t change our mentality, we have to keep playing, grind out the result.”
Ian Evatt’s side were missing several players through injury and illness, and the Wanderers boss admitted after the final whistle that he was not confident many would return in time to face Manchester United in the Papa Johns Trophy on Tuesday night.
Sheehan is eager for another chance to feature, however, and is optimistic the squad situation will improve soon.
“I am sound, I’ve been waiting for a chance to play and I am ready,” he said.
“Hopefully a few of the other lads will be back in soon over the next couple of days but it is that time of year where people do get ill. Unfortunately, we have had a few injuries as well, and thankfully it hasn’t been as bad as it was last year.”
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