Attacking the defence

08 March 2012 20:43
Throughout much of this season, if you'd asked me where City were strongest, I would have said at the back and it was the foundation of any promotion/play-off challenge that we had.

I had a terrific day yesterday and enjoyed our first visit to AmEx - despite a crap first half - but having scored two fantastic goals (real quality from Joe Mason and sheer brilliance by Whitts), we let ourselves down by giving away two real soft goals but it's been that way for a while. Gutted to see us drop points at the death again but Brighton, in fairness, didn't deserve to lose that game.Cardiff have now conceded 43 in the league about 10 more goals than other play-off and promotion contenders, only Blackpool have conceded more of the top 9 sides.However it's got alarmingly worse in recent weeks. We've conceded 16 goals at 2 a game in the last 8 matches and not kept a clean sheet since visiting relegation-haunted Doncaster almost 2 months ago. If we need to get 2 just to draw a game, we can forget any play-off challenge.Contrast this to late November to that game at Doncaster when we kept a hugely impressive 7 clean sheets in 12 games and only conceded 7 in other 5 games.A feature of the recent goals conceded is how many have been soft with poor marking, concentration, positional play, failure to clear or tackle in the build up to the goals and it's come from all of the defenders and the keeper too.Hopefully Malky and his back line will sort it out but, of all the problems with City at present (the right midfield format, Kenny up front etc), it's the one we most need to get right on the run-in.

Source: FOOTYMAD