The optimism around the restart of League One football after the international break has quickly been extinguished.

Since last writing, City have fallen to 2 further defeats. Losing to Wigan at SJP on Saturday and Derby at Pride Park last night. Both games ended 2-0 to the opposition.

City’s form is now a real concern, and even more alarmingly, the performances are also starting to deteriorate. In fairness to City, Saturday’s showing vs Wigan was not too bad, but the showing at Derby last night was unquestionably the worst display of the season.

The Grecians also can’t fall back on the excuse that we have lots of injuries anymore either. Only Dion Rankine & Ilmari Niskinen remain on the treatment table. These injuries have affected the balance of the team in my opinion, but Vincent Harper is doing a decent job of filling in these past few games.

Looking at the stats, it would suggest that City were all over Wigan on Saturday and were extremely unlucky to lose. I do not feel the stats were a fair reflection of the game. That being said, I do feel City were unfortunate not to get a point out of the game.

While City had 72% possession, this was in part down to Wigan’s willingness to sit off and let us have the ball. Once the visitors took the lead in the 8th minute, they let City have the ball, and City did very little to truly worry the Latics defence and goalkeeper.

Wigan took the lead after an uncharacteristic mistake from Pierce Sweeney, which allowed Stephen Humphreys to advance down the left, sweeping the ball across to Martial Godo in the middle who finished with aplomb. Those 2 players in particular were menaces all day long.

Wigan’s tactic of sitting off was justified when they hit City on the break to score a second right at the death to send the City players to the turf in frustration.

I’m all for a possession game, and I do think it’s the right way to play, but there has to be a purpose to that possession and for much of the game, the ball was being moved across the backline or the midfield, with very little in the way of forward or defence splitting passes.

I felt City did improve in the second half, with Caleb Watts a bright spark down the left and Reece Cole asserting an influence on the game when he came off the bench in the 74th minute.

City registered 29 shots, but with only 4 of those on target, never really looked like scoring. We huffed and puffed, but couldn’t get the goal we desperately needed.

It was onto Tuesday and Derby County, who themselves are underperforming this season and have some unrest amongst the clubs supporters towards boss Paul Warne. Warne needed a result against City, and I’m sure he will have been surprised how easy that was.

City never got going and the reaction that was so desperately needed was not forthcoming. The performance was poor, we lacked any ideas going forward and almost looked scared to attack. Everything was too slow, whether it be releasing passes, into the tackle, pressing the opposition and we were overrun in the middle of the park. Any chance we did have to counter attack, we were ponderous on the ball and allowed the opportunity to bypass us.

Tom Carroll was pressed every time he got the ball which led to numerous dispossessions and I felt that we were crying out for another body in the middle of the pitch. Harry Kite’s energy could have helped Carroll and also allowed Trevitt the freedom to roam forwards and help the attack when possible.

Talking of the attack, Admiral Muskwe has now returned from injury and played the last two games, but has struggled to make any impact. Hopefully he is working his way back to full fitness and we get to see the best of him very soon.

City again managed decent possession (49%) but there was nothing created from that possession. It was very much sideways and backwards with limited movement provided to give players on the ball options.

Derby had 26 shots to City’s 3, while Derby had 8 shots on target to City’s 0. On another night, Derby could have easily scored another couple of goals to make the scoreline look much worse.

Nathaniel Mendez-Laing scored the first goal after a good move from Derby and he caused City issues all night with this power and speed. The goal was another soft one from City though, with Harper misjudging the initial lofted ball out wide and Jack Fitzwater slow to get across to the attacker. Alex Hartridge at least made his best attempts to block the ball but was unfortunately too late.

Derby’s second goal came from a City mistake, James Scott had time to play in Caleb Watts down the right, but delayed too long and contrived to pass the ball straight to the Derby left back. From that, Derby broke away and scored their 2nd goal of the night and killed the game.

After the game, Club Captain Pierce Sweeney fronted up to the cameras and gave a very honest and frank assessment of where City are at at the moment and left the squad under no illusions that they have to work harder for the manager.

Sweeney had volunteered himself for the post match interview and cited that he was protecting other players in the squad from saying something that they shouldn’t or that they might regret. That leads me to believe that there is a little bit of unrest in the camp currently and the only way the squad will get through that is by sticking together. Sweeney showing again what a valuable member of the squad he is and acted like a true leader and captain.

So, thoughts and attention now turns to Lincoln City at SJP on Saturday. Lincoln have won their last 2 games and sit in 9th position in the table, 5 points ahead of City having played 1 game fewer. City have plummeted to 18th position. The euphoria of being top of the league and knocking Luton out of the cup feels a long time ago.

City quite frankly must stop the rot this weekend. Any result will do, no matter how we get it. When a club is in a really bad run of form like this, any result is a good result. While we desperately need a win to lift spirits, I would most definitely take a point. Anything to stop this run of defeats.

After the Lincoln game, we play Middlesbrough & Wigan in the cup competitions to give us a reprieve from our league struggles and who knows, maybe it will be one of those cup matches that reignites our spark. 3 games at SJP in a week will either turn out to be a good or bad thing. While City boss Caldwell often praises the City faithful for staying behind the players, there were murmurs of discontent in the stands on Saturday and that will only intensify if the results (particularly at home) don’t improve.

It’s clear that something needs to change, whether that be our style of play, the system we play, whatever it might be, it currently isn’t working. In my opinion, introducing Harry Kite or Reece Cole into the midfield alongside Tom Carroll should make us more solid. Trevitt can drop into the 3 when out of possession, but be tasked with getting forward and playing off the striker when we attack. We need to do something to be more creative and provide more support for our attacking players. Getting Trevitt on the ball more often will help.

We also need to press higher up the pitch and make it more difficult for the opposition teams to play out. Last season we had both Nombe and Stansfield who would press almost constantly. I’m not currently seeing the desire to press and work hard at the top end of the pitch.

Everything being said, let’s not forget the first part of the season and some of the fantastic football we were playing. That proves that we are capable. In this difficult period everyone needs to stick together and strive to get back to those performances. Sometimes all it takes is a fluke of a goal, in off someone’s backside to turn things around. Any goal will do, Negativing in the stands will not help this young team, so let’s try to remain positive and get behind these players on Saturday. I feel like they need us with them every step of the way against Lincoln.

In the words of the famous song sung by City fans in the past, “We’ll score again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll score again some sunny day”.