Bolton Wanderers midfielder Tom White feels the Trotters are making progress despite tasting defeat in their first competitive match of the season.
The Trotters were dumped out of the Carabao Cup at the first round stage by fellow League Two side Bradford City.
Antoni Sarcevic drew Wanderers level moments after the restart to cancel out Lee Novak's first half opener, but Harry Pritchard struck later on to send the Bantams through to the next round.
But with so many new players coming through the doors at the University of Bolton Stadium and many making their competitive debut in the match against the Yorkshire side, White has pointed to the progress the new group of players have made.
He said: "I think our end goal and our goal every week should be to win football matches so we can’t be buzzing about the place if we get beat.
"I think everyone’s aware of that, but there is positives to take and things to work on and things to analyse so we can’t get too downbeat about it. It’s our first game.
"Someone’s just told me there, there’s 10 debutants today, so we’ve only known each other for six weeks and the progress personally that I’ve seen has been very good and we’re going upwards rather than downwards.
"We can’t be too downbeat but we don’t want to lose too many more matches.
"Once we score that goal we should go on to win the game. We should have controlled the game better probably and it’s one sloppy goal. I don’t know how many times they got in our box today but it seems like it wasn’t very often and they’ve scored two goals.
"It is disappointing but the fans not being here today was a disadvantage but it’s not an excuse.
A total of 17 new players have now joined Ian Evatt's side this summer, the most recent of these being striker Shaun Miller who was announced as a Bolton player in the build-up to the League Cup match.
And having been through pre-season with the Trotters as one of the earlier acquisitions having been brought in from Blackburn Rovers, White can see positive seeds have been sewn.
He said: "We have to be positive. It’s people’s first (competitive) games in six months, my first 90 minutes in six months and a same for a lot of the lads.
"It’s a work in progress and I think people watching can see the seed being embedded and we will get better and we will win football games - I’ve got no doubt about it."
