Mick McCarthy provides fascinating analysis of Blackpool's season so far as he discusses his favoured formation

The Seasiders have one of the worst defensive records in the Championship this season, having shipped 40 goals in their 27 games.

Only Reading, Hull City and Wigan Athletic have conceded more.

McCarthy will be looking to lay down the foundations to improve on that record and make his new side a lot more difficult to beat.

“What have we conceded, 40 goals? That tells you something about it,” he said.

“Unless you’ve got great goalscorers or you’re scoring more, then you’re going to be in trouble.

“I’m not saying we’ll just go and defend, everybody does it. Whether it’s Ian Poveda, whether it’s Morgan Rogers, Josh Bowler or Jerry Yates the goalscorer, everyone defends.

“We attack as a team and we defend as a team, it’s an old adage but there’s plenty of truth to it. That’s never changed.

“I watch teams now and when they’re under the cosh, they put 10 men behind the ball. You’ve got to be hard to beat.”

McCarthy has spent some of his first few days in the job looking back at Blackpool’s games so far this season to see if there’s a trend he can look to address.

But the 63-year-old says Blackpool’s struggles can’t be pinned on one thing and one thing only, admitting it’s been a “catalogue” of errors with the goals they’ve let in.

“I asked the analyst to put together some clips of the goals we’ve conceded because I wondered if there was a thread running through it,” McCarthy said.

“Do we get caught on the break? Is it free-kicks and corners? I know there was a bit of focus on corners because they went away to Spain and they went back to zonal marking, which seems to have pleased the lads and they’ve been better since.

“But we’ve conceded from crosses from the right, crosses from the left, free-kicks from the right, free-kicks from the left, corners from the right, corners from the left, second phases from corners and free-kicks, balls down the middle, mistakes…I couldn’t find a thread and tell you ‘we need to stop that’, it was an absolute catalogue of goals we conceded.

“It was interesting because I just wanted to know. Is it something we can stop? Or is it something we have got to address collectively as a team and defend better? That’s what stood out to me.”

McCarthy has historically played in a traditional 4-4-2, although he did experiment with five at the back during his time at Cardiff.

When asked if he has a system in mind for the Seasiders, he added: “I tend to adopt the formation I think is the best for the players.

“If you want to play 4-4-2 and you’ve got no wingers, or you want to play a back four and you haven’t got two centre halves then you might be struggling.

“If you want to play 4-3-3 and you’ve only got two midfielders, that might be a struggle as well, so you’ve got to be adaptable.”