Very good on the ball, but need to work harder and be better off it, is manager Paul Cook’s assessment of his team after 11 league games.
The Blues are 14th in League One having made a slow start to the campaign but have recently shown an upturn in form winning three of their last five, drawing one and losing one.
They have scored 21 times, jointly the most alongside the MK Dons, with their home total of 17 at home is three more than anyone else in the top four divisions.
However, they have conceded 19 with only two League One sides having shipped more, although only four in their last five.
Cook was asked about keeper Vaclav Hladky and his progress after a tough start to his Blues career having signed from Salford City in the summer, but talked more generally about his side’s form from a defensive perspective.
"We’re 11 games into a season, aren’t we? I think if you look back on the season in general, we’ve been flattened once properly by Bolton Wanderers at home,” he said.
"Apart from that, the games have all taken formats where we have taken more points.
"If you look at the 11 games with the league settling down now, our goals-for column is great, our goals-against column is not good enough.
"The simple reality is that we are very good when we have a ball. When we don’t have the ball we need to work harder and be better.
"Vaz [Hladky] is part of that, like the strikers are part of that. We work as a team, we win as a team and we lose as a team, that’s football.
"Everybody along the way has found good moments in games, probably had disappointments in games and they’re all part of the journey in 11 games.
"The brutal reality is that we want to learn from our mistakes, we want to grow, we want to work harder and we want to get stronger.
"That can only come to effect if we can go to Cambridge tomorrow and give our fans a performance to be proud of.”