Sheffield Wednesday suffered yet another away day disaster at the back on Saturday as the goals against column continues to grow at a rapid rate.
Following the 4-0 drubbing at Home Park Wednesday now have a minus six goal difference and despite sitting in the top ten in the Championship only bottom of the table Nottingham Forest and 23rd placed Doncaster have a worse goal difference.
The 18 goals that Wednesday have conceded is the joint worst in the division and yet in the five games they have played at Hillsborough only two have been let in.
At an average of over 3 goals against per away game the 16 goals that the Owls have shipped in their 5 away games should be a cause of embarrassment for all concerned.
At Plymouth, although injuries forced the Owls into a couple of defensive changes, all teams are going to encounter these kinds of problems throughout the course of a season but most will not wilt like this. Steve Watson, who dropped into the back four, has a wealth of experience and young Mark Beevers, who also returned to the side, would be in most supporters' first choice back four so the team should have been capable of adapting to these changes.
When 6 goals were scored by Reading against us this was regarded as a one-off and much of the blame was placed on the travel problems getting to the game.
It seems however that the games against Swansea and Charlton are the breaks from the norm as the Owls consistently seem to be picking the ball out of their own net on their travels.
Indeed but for some wayward finishing both Swansea and Charlton could easily have had two or three goals themselves in the first halves of their games against the Owls and had they took those early chances then who knows how much worse our already shocking defensive record would look?
Wednesday have not kept a clean sheet on the road since they visited the Ricoh Arena back in mid-March, a run of nine games and with local rivals Barnsley and league leaders Birmingham next up for the Owls away from Hillsborough there is much work to be done to turn things around.