According to the website whoscored.com 53% of the goals that Notts have conceded this season is from open play, but significantly, 33% of goals conceded have come from set pieces.

Conceding goals from corners & free kicks are still at a significant amount & we have already seen how costly those concessions can be.

We have seen a big improvement in the Notts performances over the last few weeks & the defence has had a big role in that improvement,

I am sure Martin Paterson is aware of the statistics about the circumstances of each goal conceded & will be working to get those set piece goal percentages down.

Of course the opposition will be looking at those figures too, & they will be very aware that Notts can be vulnerable to set pieces,

If Martin Paterson can solve this set piece conundrum by reducing the percentage of these set piece concessions, it could make the difference between losing a match, drawing or winning more matches.

That means more work on the training field, such as the way that Notts set up & deal with set pieces, the role of the goalkeeper, & outfield players when waiting for a set piece delivery.

I think we can improve when it comes to defending set-pieces and I’m sure a lot of work goes into it. I've spoken about how I think Roos can do more but it's just as important that the players know their man and they stick to them. At times against the physical teams, we do look more susceptible to conceding from set-pieces, but that is a massive part of what makes those teams successful and they’ll score the majority of their goals from this.

I think our average of goals conceded from set-pieces will be always be slightly higher and that is down to how a lot of teams set-up against us. The majority of the teams in the league are going to sit deep, try and counter and make the most of their set-pieces. It was exactly what Cambridge (tried to do) and what Oldham and Crewe did with varying success. And to be fair, against Barnet they had 12 corners and number of decent free-kick positions and they got nothing out of us.

I’m not overly hung-up about set-pieces right now because overall, we are in a good place when it comes to our defence this season. We are the joint 4^th best in the league in terms of goals conceded with 15. Oldham are top with 12 but it’s coming at cost for them as they’ve only scored 12 goals too (that’s the joint 2^nd worse). We’ve scored 25 goals, that puts us 2^nd best. If this trend continues, we’ll be in strong place come the end of the season.