We want more clean sheets this season - Bentley

BRISTOL City have started the campaign in fine fettle with three wins from three games - albeit two victories against lower-league opposition in the Carabao Cup.

Still, there are some good signs from the Robins for the campaign ahead following the 4-0 demolition of Keith Curle’s Northampton Town on Wednesday evening.

The Robins smashed in four goals for the first time since March 2018, and also kept a clean sheet.

Goalkeeper Dan Bentley is hungry for more and explained that the club are looking to improve defensively after conceding 65 goals in the 2019-20 campaign.

“We want to improve on everything - there’s nothing where everyone thinks we’ve cracked it and we don’t need to improve,” said Bentley, pictured, at the pre-Stoke City press conference.

“However, that (the goals conceded last season) was something we touched on as a collective at the end of last season and is something we’ve spoken on as a group coming into this season.

“There is a number of clean sheets that we want. And it’s considerably higher than last year albeit 10 was a fairly good number if you look at the number of goals we conceded and how sloppy the manner was for the goals we gave away.

“However we’re focusing more on a team collective effort of defending. Whether that’s Nahki (Wells) losing the ball in their box and he has to run back 70 yards to make a last-ditch tackle, then so be it. As a team we defend and attack collectively. And everything else inbetween is a collective. It’s not just down to the goalkeeper and defenders to keep clean sheets.”