Cardiff City & Preston: Goals Guaranteed ?!?

Cardiff City are preparing to host Preston North End on Saturday and will be hoping to halt an alarming slide down the table courtesy of three successive defeats. A misfing midfield and wobbly defence have been the undoing for City - only West Brom and Blackpool have scored more goals in the Championship.

We do concede goals though, and bad ones. Forset's late equaliser, Ipswich's lazy winner and the two early goals by Swansea indicate our defensive frailty of late and with Hudson and Gerrard yet to convince - questions are being asked.

However, Preston North End are in a similar boat with 24 goals conceded this season marking them as a side who can be beaten. The loss of key defender Sean St Ledger was hard to take and their defence is yet to rediscover its mean streak. Tht fact is manifested by a 7 game run without a clean sheet - with 12 goals netted in that period.

Even lowly Scunthorpe put three on the Lilywhites while Spurs hit 5 in a League Cup clash.


Cardiff City are only 5 games since a clean sheet, having beaten Coventry City 2-0 at home. However, those 5 games saw an alarming 10 goals shipped. Essentially, we are far more comfortable in defence when scoring goals ourselves - it often helps us immensely to take the lead making Sunday's 2-1 reversal against Ipswich even more worrying.

With both sides struggling to keep clean sheets and conceding too many, it seems likely that the potent strikeforce of Chopra, Whittingham and Bothroyd could be set to add to their respective tallies. With the power of Preston's Brown, Mellor and Parkin to contend with - PNE will also be expecting to make the scoresheet making this an interesting as well as crucial game.

So 0-0 is almost a certainty then...

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