Ebbsfleet United boss Dennis Kutrieb says side’s free-flowing instincts make defensive improvements a challenge

Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb believes changing the mindset of his squad has not been easy.

After racing to the National League South title last season, the Fleet have had different questions asked of them this term.

They’ve struggled after early promising results and have now gone 22 games without a clean sheet in all competitions.

A solid defence has always been part of Kutrieb’s outlook but it’s taken time to adjust after months of attacking, flowing football.

“I was speaking about it in pre-season and we worked on it then but there are a few different things,” explained Kutrieb, when talking about why his team have conceded so many goals this season.

“Sometimes it’s individual mistakes, sometimes it’s the quality from the opposition which punishes you if you make a mistake.

“Sometimes it’s switching off from set-pieces, sometimes it’s the players that are playing are not ready as they’ve been injured or they can’t play because they’ve been injured. There’s so many different things.

“Sometimes as a team you have a successful season where you don’t need to put your focus just on defending, you always could focus on how to score more goals, create more chances and what you can do to have more box entries.

“But when you focus on this for nearly one year, then it’s not easy to switch around and say ‘okay, we’ve done that last season but this season we need the complete opposite’.

“Obviously still all the praise from last year and the confidence helped us get the wins in the beginning but as soon as this turned in another direction, that’s sometimes hard work as it’s not easy to switch again.

“It’s always more comfortable to go forward, more comfortable to score goals, even do these things in training instead of working