ON a blustery weekend, Southend United’s hopes of their first back-to-back wins in 16 months were blown away in Blackpool.

The Shrimpers headed north hoping to build on a spirited success against Lincoln City.

But a brace from Blackpool striker Armand Gnanduillet secured a 2-1 victory for the hosts, meaning Blues have still not bagged two triumphs in succession since October 2018.

Sol Campbell was again forced to field a number of inexperienced players at Bloomfield Road.

However, the youngsters and those around them could not be faulted for effort.

But a lack of quality in key areas ultimately swayed the match in favour of the Tangerines who ended a run of 10 matches without a win to ease the mounting pressure on manager Simon Grayson.

Blues’ destiny has long been decided this season and a return to League Two has seemed inevitable for quite some time.

Yet the encouraging win against Lincoln certainly raised the spirits and the Shrimpers could well have taken something from Saturday’s clash had the key incidents gone their way.

But, with the game still goalless at the weekend, Stephen McLaughlin lobbed an effort over the crossbar when clean through on goal.

And, just three minutes later, Gnanduillet – a regular thorn in Southend’s side in recent seasons – headed the hosts in front before doubling his tally from the penalty spot at the start of the second half.

As a result, Blues have now conceded a whopping 72 goals in their 29 games so far this term, four more than they let in during the whole of the previous campaign.

The Shrimpers only just avoided relegation last term but their defensive troubles remain a huge reason for their wretched run this term.

Blues have managed just two clean sheets all season and on average have conceded close to 2.5 goals a game.

On top of that, Southend have conceded more goals than any club in the Football League.

And Saturday could well have helped to show why.

For lining up in the Blackpool rearguard for the first time was Taylor Moore, who spent the whole of last season on loan with the Shrimpers.

Moore looked very assured in his first start for the Seasiders and he has never been properly replaced at Roots Hall.

The statistics from last term underline Moore’s importance to Blues as the winning percentage with the young defender in the starting line-up stood at 41 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent when he was left out.

Those struggles have continued during the current campaign with the Shrimpers triumphing in just 14 per cent of their games.

Replacing the popular Moore has certainly proved problematic and again raises huge question marks on Blues’ recruitment.

The experienced Liam Ridgewell was brought to the club in the summer but played little more than 50 minutes – in the reverse fixture against Blackpool – before never being seen on the pitch again.

Another summer signing, Joe Shaughnessy, has yet to really prove his worth and has been out of action since November.

Harry Lennon has managed just 22 League starts since signing in 2018 while Rob Kiernan made 27 League starts in three-and-a-half years before being allowed to leave during the transfer window.

Three broken arms in the space of 10 months for John White has certainly not helped the cause and Blues had Elvis Bwomono and Timothee Dieng at centre-back at the weekend, both of whom have spent much of their careers playing elsewhere.

The situation is certainly far from ideal but the Shrimpers still showed good spirit on Saturday.

McLaughlin made up for his earlier miss by scoring the goal of the season so far when he netted a scorching strike from long range but Blues were unable to conjure up a late leveller as they suffered their 19th defeat in 29 League games.

Southend will now be looking to restore some pride during the remainder of the season while also aiming to rebuild for next term.

But the same mistakes cannot be made in the transfer market.

Blues remain in talks to sign ex-Macclesfield Town duo Theo Vassell and Emmanuel Osadebe but big lessons have to be learnt from previous errors in recruitment.

And, only when that is achieved, will the Shrimpers be able to start moving in the right direction on a more consistent basis once again.