"It's all about character, isn't it and it's at times like this when that's tested," said Coleman to the CT.
"I don't judge myself or people around me when we're winning, when everybody's flying - I judge them when it's not going well, when you can't see where the next point or the next clean sheet is coming from.
"I've been in a lot of dressing rooms and I've been fortunate to work with and play with a lot of lads who have got that sort of character - and we're certainly going to need a bit of it at the weekend."
The City boss kept his players in the changing room for 45 minutes after the defeat at Cardiff and added; "If I'm honest, we seem to have lost that little bit of feeling for each other at the moment.
"When Cardiff scored so early, heads went down, it looked as though there was a sense of inevitability and that's very disappointing.
"You've got to be strong enough and hard enough to defend properly and perhaps we need a little bit more experience to calm us down.
"I wish I could mask it, paper over the cracks but that's not really my style.
"The fact is we've had two defeats on the bounce, we've conceded four goals and haven't scored any ourselves, so there's a lot of food for thought before Saturday."