As we would rightfully expect, teams that win promotion to the Premier League find it more difficult to score and concede more goals. I thought that our defence was the key to us winning promotion little over a year ago and was the last thing that needed fixing. That, in hindsight, might have been a mistake.

Over the last 10 seasons, only 7 teams have won promotion to the PL having conceded less than we did in 2017/18. We were harder to score against than the Cardiff side that won the Championship 5 seasons prior to this. On average over the last decade, promoted teams have conceded 14 more goals after promotion. We conceded 30 more. Only 5 teams conceded more than 30 more goals after promotion than they did during their promotion season.

Is this surprising? Not really. There's absolutely no link between having a good defence in the Championship and carrying that into the Premier League. If anything, those defences that coped so well in the Championship tended to ship more goals after promotion. Could this be due to managers thinking that their good defence is the last thing to think about in the transfer market?

On average over the last decade, promotion winning teams have scored 33 goals less than they did when they won promotion. Last season we scored 35 less, which is roughly on par with what you might expect. It's actually more remarkeable when you think that we didn't bring in a striker until January. Again, there's little evidence suggesting teams that score lots in the Championship will do so in the Premier League.

Our first Premier League campaign saw relegation because we couldn't score enough goals and couldn't defend after Malky left. This season saw relegation mainly because we conceded too many goals. To put our defensive performance into perspective, only 2 PL sides in the last decade have conceded more goals at home than we did. Perhaps it's the curse of the Cardiff City stadium - our home "against" tally ranks 3rd and 6th worst in the last decade.