It's interesting how many different opinions there are regarding why we've conceded so many goals this season but if you think back to Brendans own words it's not really surprising.
He stated that to qualify for CL we needed to score more goals so his focus last summer was to work out a way to achieve that. He tried desperately to add some more attacking players, didn't get them but achieved it anyway. He changed his training and tactics to make sure we got the best out of our attacking force and that's exactly what's happened.
I believe there is a "method" that coaches/managers go through when taking over a club/team which usually starts with sorting out the defense, make it as watertight as possible then start adding to the attack. Brendan's done it the other way round.
We failed to buy the attacking options last summer but bought 4 new defensive players instead, Migs, Toure, Sakho and Ilori, he also added Aly on loan. You could say they haven't strengthened the squad as only Migs has been an ever present, Flanno has emerged from nowhere and Ilori has been sent out on loan. Whether they are good enough, once the other pieces of the jigsaw are in place, nobody knows but I think we need to stop looking back at how we used to defend, or the players we used to have in defense because we're evolving away from that way of playing.
To keep saying we need a Steve Clarke type defensive coach or a Masch type destroyer to sort out the defense is silly because Brendan doesn't want that style of play. We only play a deep defensive line because we don't have the players yet to play a high defensive line but that's the way we'll be going, maybe not next season but we will eventually.
To reiterate, qualifying for the Champions League was our priority target this season, Brendan believed to do that we needed to add more goals, not have a better defense. We have achieved both.
Maybe if Brendans priority target was winning the Title this season we would have seen a better defensive performance but then we wouldn't have witnessed the free flowing all out attack we've all enjoyed and might not even have finished top 4.
Despite the amazing season we've had, we're still a work in progress so rather than being disappointed that we've conceded too many goals let's just revel in the fact that we're not far off and that Brendan knows what needs to be done next