The hardest part of football is scoring a goal, but, despite them being at a premium for Exeter City right now, manager Paul Tisdale is not about to start panicking.

Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Charlton Athletic was the 16th time the Grecians have drawn a blank in 28 League games this season and the third successive match in which they failed to find the target.

Daniel Nardiello, who has been a substitute for the last two matches, remains the Grecians’ top goalscorer with six League goals, but he has failed to find the target since the 4-4 draw at Sheffield United at the end of October.

Richard Logan is next in the scoring charts with three, Guillem Bauza and Danny Coles have two apiece, along with Jake Taylor and John O’Flynn, while a further six players have scored once. One own goal has also been scored in City’s favour. In total, Exeter have scored 24 goals this campaign, the lowest total in npower League One.

On the plus side, the Grecians have looked far stronger defensively in recent weeks, and limited Charlton to only one clear-cut chance last Saturday.

The Addicks’ goal was something of a fluke as Danny Green’s mis-hit cross was fumbled into his own net by goalkeeper Artur Krysiak, and Tisdale says it is from that defensive base that City will continue to build for the rest of the season.

“These things happen and I don’t want to dig too deep,” Tisdale said. “It’s like when you try and remodel a golfer’s swing, you know it is going to go backwards before it goes forwards, and I don’t think we are at the stage of a season where it is right to dig too deep.

“Just let them play and let them run around and, off the back of working hard and some very good results, goals will come.

“I know these players are capable of scoring goals, they will score goals.

“I’m going to let them carry on and we will be judged ultimately on how many goals we score, and they just have to keep going. It’s as simple as that.”

Tisdale reverted from the

4-3-3 formation that he has deployed in recent weeks to a

3-5-2 system for the clash with Charlton and, to all intents and purposes, it worked well.

It has been argued that such a system suits the Grecians best and gets the best out of a number of players – including Steve Tully, who seems more comfortable playing as a wing-back rather than as an orthodox full-back.

“I thought it was the best way to play against Charlton. I think it worked very well and I have no questions over the way we played,” Tisdale said. “There are 101 ways to win a football match and that is the one I chose for Saturday.

“When you consider how few chances we restricted them to, I think it worked very well, other than we didn’t get our goal.

“Unfortunately for me, the moment in the game we made our changes was the precise moment they scored their goal, so, from a position where we were looking to step it up and try something different, we were then chasing the game. That was the only disappointment for me, we didn’t get a chance to see it through.

“I have no grumbles with the way it worked, I don’t think they really had a chance. Up until the point we changed things, I don’t remember a chance for them.”