There’s no hiding it: the 4-3 defeat at Wealdstone last Saturday was a genuinely poor performance.

The obvious conclusion to draw from such a result is that our defence is struggling, especially as it came hot on the heels of a failure to keep a clean sheet at home to Maidenhead. You’re aren’t supposed to concede 5 goals in consecutive matches against the sides that are bottom of the table. Yet if you break down the goals we’ve conceded this season, the situation becomes more complex.

We’ve let in 7 goals in 5 matches, and 4 of them came from set pieces. Before the Maidenhead game, we hadn’t conceded a goal in open play, and it’s interesting to see whether the defensive unit was at fault for the three goals that didn’t come from a restart.

Maidenhead’s goal was down to Jordan Davies being caught in possession thirty yards out from his own goal. We were caught short at the back, but you’d expect that to be the case in that situation: when a team’s in possession, players get themselves into position to receive a pass, so a sudden turnover can be catastrophic.

You can’t point the finger at anyone for Jacob Mendy’s goal for Wealdstone. It was a once-in-a-lifetime strike, which nobody could legislate for.

The first Maidenhead goal could have been defended better. Reece Hall-Johnson was beaten for pace and the resulting cross set up a simple finish. The right back will have hoped to do better, but full backs are beaten by wingers sometimes, and Dennon Lewis would have secured a move to Charlton Athletic in the Summer if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of the coronavirus. He’s going to beat more full backs this season, I assure you.

To me, the evidence suggests that in open play the back four is doing okay: set pieces seem to be the problem.

Obviously, you can’t free our defenders from their responsibility to defence set plays. We have quite a tall back four, with two full backs who are the height of centre backs. But failings in this area of the game are something the entire team has to address.

Perhaps we’re fortunate that this is the first midweek of the season which doesn’t contain a game, as we’re able to spend the week on the training ground. Defending corners and free kicks looks to be the obvious focus for the coaching team this week, and thankfully it’s something which will improve with practise.  We need to sort this issue out, or we’ll struggle to make progress in the FA Cup tomorrow.