I have a wordpress site and sometimes when logged in to the admin it can be quite slow. I've attached an image to show what i mean. The first request waits for about 8 seconds before anything else happens, a lot of the time that is about 2.5 to 3 seconds wait. Then all of the other requests get blocked for several seconds.
I do have quite a few plugins (26) could this be the reason or is it something else?
What's actually going on here and what i can do to improve it as much as i can?