Western Daily Press (Saturday)
City looking to improve defensively, says Bentley
BRISTOL City have started the campaign in fine fettle with three wins in three matches so far – albeit two against lower league opposition in the Carabao Cup.
Still, there are some good signs from the Robins for the campaign ahead, following the demolition of Keith Curle’s Northampton on Wednesday evening.
The Robins smashed in four goals for the first time since March 2018 but also kept a clean sheet – seen as the key defensive currency traded across football.
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,” he said at a press briefing ahead of tomorrow’s Championship clash at Stoke.
“It (the goals conceded last season) was something we touched on as a collective at the end of last season and is something that we’ve spoken on as a group coming in to this one.
“There is a number of clean sheets that we want. And it’s considerably higher than last year – albeit ten 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 in between is a collective. It’s not just down to the goalkeeper and defenders to keep clean sheets, but equally it’s not down to the strikers and the wingers to score goals. It’s everybody – with Tomas (Kalas) against Coventry, that’s our centre-back trying to keep a clean sheet all game then winning us the game. As a collective we have certain aims we want to achieve that I’ll keep in-house now on how we want to improve on the manner of goals we give away,” he said.
Skipper Kalas is doubtful after picking up a shoulder injury in the game against the Cobblers.
“At the moment Tomas has got to see a specialist and have a scan and we await those results,” said City assistant head coach Keith Downing.
“It was a big disappointment for us all – certainly after five minutes and we’ll have to see what the medical people say. He’s the captain and it’s an important role for the team. It was such an innocuous challenge as well. He fell awkwardly, but we’re optimistic he can come back sooner rather than later.”