Boss Kieran McKenna admits that the Blues not having a single shot on target at Sheffield Wednesday last weekend isn’t a stat he wants to see repeated too often, but felt his side got into dangerous areas on a number of occasions against the Owls.
Reflecting on last week’s 1-0 defeat to the Owls, McKenna said his view of the match hasn’t changed too much
"Similar feelings after watching the game back to what I felt at the time and what I said after the game,” he said.
"I thought it’s clear that we had some good elements to our game away from home against a team who has the best home record in the league.
"We definitely took the ball well on a very difficult pitch, we built up well and our play in the first two-thirds of the pitch was good.
"But it’s also clear that we didn’t create as many clear-cut chances as we would want.
"In terms of not having any shots on target, obviously that is not a stat that we want to happen very often.
"On the other hand, I thought on numerous occasions we got into really dangerous areas and we were probably a yard off having a tap-in or a clear chance.
"We had eight shots blocked in the game, a couple of them really good opportunities.
"Obviously there was Sone Aluko’s chance at the end that the centre-half blocks from maybe nine yards out in the face of the goal.
"If that goes in, we’re probably looking back and saying, ‘All in all, a good point and a good away performance’.
"It’s obviously not a stat we’re going to see very often hopefully, but it’s not something that I think is very relevant. As I say, for us, it’s more about the areas that we get into - did we have penetration, did we get around and behind their defence?
"I thought we did that on quite a few occasions, not as many times as we would want, but on quite a few occasions.
"We just weren’t quite able to get the last pass right, the timing or the movement and we didn’t quite get the bounce of the ball in their penalty box either, to be honest.”
Macauley Bonne started as a lone striker with Bersant Celina and Conor Chaplin behind him. Might the Blues have presented more of a threat if they’d started with two out-and-out strikers?
"In terms of formations,” McKenna continued. "For me, whether it’s one striker, two strikers or three strikers, which we’ve looked like on numbers of occasions, it’s about getting people in the right areas, having a threat behind the defence, about having bodies in the box whenever we get around the side, and there were times on Saturday when that could have been better for sure.
"I thought there were times when we did get good penetration and worked the ball well, got around the side of the defence when we didn’t have as many bodies in the box as what we would want.
"I don’t think that’s necessarily a formation thing, that’s improving individuals, improving personnel, working on our movements and our patterns as a team to make sure that we have bodies high up the pitch and that we have bodies arriving in goalscoring areas.
"That’s something we’ve looked at, something that we’ve worked on this week and something that we will hopefully see an improvement on on Saturday.”