Will Aimson might be getting meaner in his old age.

Wanderers’ miserly defence has conceded just one goal in 13 hours of football, and at its centre, an experienced head in the form of his life.

The 13th season of Aimson’s professional career appeared to be going nowhere prior to December when a lack of first team appearances coupled with a hamstring injury left many predicting that he would leave the club in January.

Things changed completely when two of Ian Evatt’s defensive lynch-pins were taken out of commission within a couple of weeks of each other. First Ricardo Santos succumbed to a nasty respiratory virus, then Gethin Jones was ruled out with a muscular injury.

Aimson found himself leading a young back line with the relatively untested Eoin Toal and George Johnston either side. The results? Well, they speak for themselves.

Lincoln City are the only team to have punctured Bolton’s defences since Aimson, Toal and Johnston were thrown together for the first time in the latter stages of the Papa Johns Trophy game against Manchester United’s Under-21s.

“For me, personally, it is one of the best runs I have had in my career,” said Aimson, whose current run of six straight league starts is the best in his time at Bolton.

“The one we did concede was terrible. A set-piece at Lincoln, which was probably one of the easier games we have had, no disrespect to them, but looking at the sides we have come up against.

“I just feel like the whole thing has been a team effort. Everyone is working hard, buying into what we are trying to do.

“I speak to other players and people I know around the game and they are all telling me how difficult we are to play against at the moment. The energy and attitude we’re showing off the ball is intense and it makes it hard to play your own game.

“That all starts at the top as well, with the strikers, and it drips down through the team as well.”

A check on Aimson’s Wikipedia shows a solid career, played primarily in Leagues One and Two, with Hull City, Blackpool, Bury and Plymouth Argyle.

“It also says I was born on January 1 but it’s not, it’s June 3, I’m still 28! We need to get that changed. I’m not a fossil yet!” the defender complained.

And with that, perhaps a window into why Wanderers defence has been working so well of late.

Aimson has found his voice as a leader in the absence of Santos and Jones, pushing the younger players around him in a fine run of form in which the Whites have lost just once in 13 games in league and cup.

“When I was younger – I wouldn’t say I was nice, because you have to be aggressive as a defender and put yourself around – but vocally, I was never really the loudest in the changing room, dishing out rants, or anything like that,” he explained.

“But it is something that in the last two or three years, I have become more aware. Once you get past 25 and get more experienced, playing all the games, it is something I have consciously tried to work on and get better at.

“It is always helpful. I’ll never dig someone out for the wrong reasons.

“It is never personal and I think when you are constantly talking and organising it helps me stay concentrated.

“Being central, I can see everything, but when you play down one of the sides like Eoin Toal or George Johnston, it can be more difficult to give information to the opposite side of the pitch.”

The last time Wanderers kept six consecutive clean sheets at home, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit had just hit the bookshelves. It was September 1937 and Europe was stirring for war.

The same season, Bolton held a benefit match for Derby County – their opponents this weekend – to be played on Christmas Day. After the match was abandoned for fog, it was replayed two days later with the Rams winning 4-2 and taking half the gate receipts of a crowd topping 31,000.

Wanderers will hope not to be as charitable this weekend, where at win at Pride Park would lift them into fourth sport in the table, and potentially close up an 11-point gap on second-placed Sheffield Wednesday.

“I honestly think we can put together a run and catch them,” Aimson said. “We looked at this run of six or seven games at the end of December and into January as important ones, and there’s a saying about knowing where you stand after that time of the year. We know what we need to do now and we are right in there, a good spot to kick on and looking up the league.”

Alongside the league, Aimson is also hoping to add some silverware in the Papa Johns Trophy.

The centre-back has played at Wembley before, and was part of a Blackpool side that beat Exeter City in 2017 to gain promotion to League One.

“A trip to Wembley, after what the club has been through in the last five years, would be great to give to the fans,” he said. “I have been lucky enough to play there but I know there are players in the squad who haven’t, so it would be amazing to do so.”

Standing in the way are Lancastrian rivals Accrington Stanley. Until this season no Bolton side had won at the Crown Ground – or any of its other incarnations – but Aimson feels like the 3-2 comeback victory in October will give the squad a boost for the semi-final.

“It’ll be a tough one – it’s renowned going to Accy, you know what you will be up against. It’ll be a quick and fast-tempo game with a lot of second balls, so we are going to have to be on our game to go and win it,” he said.

“It hasn’t been a great place for Bolton in the past, up to this season. But then I don’t think I have ever gone there and had an easy game, to be honest. They don’t let you get away with that.

“That result gives us the confidence to think we can go there and win – it was a monkey off the back, so to speak – and I believe we have enough in the dressing room to compete, which we’ll have to do, but then have the quality come through and win the game.”