Hull City must cut out 'soft' goals as Tigers target pivotal week

Goalkeeper Ivor Pandur says it's imperative Hull City find a way of keeping Luton Town at bay when the two sides meet in a basement battle at Kenilworth Road on Saturday.

City are without a clean sheet since the third game of the season and have struggled for goals, while Rob Edwards' Hatters have shipped 26 since slipping back into the Championship after relegation from the Premier League, the worst record in the division, bar bottom side QPR.

Given their lack of potency in the top half of the pitch, conceding goals in 14 of their 15 games so far this season has made it increasingly difficult to win games, something they've done on only three occasions so far, and Pandur says his side must cut out the soft goals, if they're to arrest an alarming slide down the table.

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"It is really important, and it's really frustrating that we have only kept one because you obviously invest so much energy into it, and we tried, we really tried to keep the ball out of the net, but it's not really going well for us," the popular stopper told Hull Live ahead of the trip to Bedfordshire.

"For us now, it's about how can we change that. How can we be better defensively as a group? How can we attack better as a group? Hopefully, things will change."

Walter's attitude to keeping clean sheets is quite simple, albeit slightly different to the norm, in that he wants his team to score three or four goals a game. The difficulty with that is that barring the three wins against Stoke City, QPR and Cardiff City, the Tigers haven't managed more than one in a single game.

During the international break, however, Pandur says work on the training pitch has centered about being more resliant and tough to beat when it comes to protecting their own goal.

"We do a lot of defensive drills that maybe he'll probably explain better than me, he explained. "We are working on it really hard through all this time and now even more because, , we didn't get a lot of clean sheets.

"The only thing I can say is really it is frustrating because sometimes you don't really know the cause, and you just keep conceding and sometimes we are soft, sometimes I don't know, but I know that each and every one of us is trying to make a good decision and try to save the ball out of the net."

While Luton are in all sorts of trouble, and boss Edwards under pressure after a poor start to the season which has seen the Hatters lose eight of their first 15 games, but despite that, Town have so far stuck by the man who guided them to promotion to the Premier League.

Thumped 5-1 at Middlesbrough last time out, City can expect a reaction from Edwards' men in front of their own supporters, so Pandur says his colleagues are prepared for a reaction, and an aerial bombardment from a team who like to play direct, and can be one of the more physical sides in the Championship.

"We know how good they are. Maybe the situation on the table is not really realistic for the quality they have, considering the players they have and everything. We know how tough it will be, but we are willing to fight for it," he continued.

"We practised it since the beginning of the week actually with the goalkeeper coach or with the team. We know what they're going to do and we will try to defend it as best as we can."

The trip to Kenilworth Road kicks off a busy week for the Tigers, who face Sheffield Wednesday at the MKM Stadium on Tuesday night before a trip to Boro next weekend, and while recent form suggests City will find it difficult to pick up points, it also presents a major opportunity to put points on the board, and build some confidence, and momentum.

"Yes, one hundred per cent (victory at Luton would raise spirits massively). It just shows us that we are capable of doing it. I think it will be a really big moral boost for us. It would just take a little bit of pressure off in this situation that we are struggling a bit. I think it will give us energy to keep going forward."