Well we had major problems under Kenny as well, there's absolutely no denying that, our defensive frailties might not have been as glaring as they were last season, but in attack we had major issues and had hard times creating clear cut chances, hence why we tended to hit the post so often (which really wasn't down to luck, it had much more IMO to do with the chances just not being good enough).
So now we seem to have swung the other direction---we're potent in attack, maybe the most potent attack in the league, but defensively we're unstable.
Well it's not really a surprise is it? It takes time to go from 8th to having an attack and defence sorted out to the extent that you challenge for the title.
Despite spending three quarters of a billion pounds it took City years before they came close - arguably they were on the way when Shinawatra was their owner.
The progress we have made since Hodgson was in charge and we were nearly sucked into a relegation fight has been incredible but you simply don;t go from being a couch potato to Usain Bolt overnight.
could you clarify what you mean by that? what is the "style" our defenders played last season? and what defensive "style" do the current defenders coming in play?
Basically, the task Brendan has when he came in was to change us from a poor-man's Chelsea using a low block counterattacking style with a target man (Clarke learning from Mourinho went for Carra for Terry, Lucas for Makalele, Gerrard for Lampard, Carroll for Drogba) into possession-based sterile domination 1433 playing a pressing game and a high line.
The only problem being Suarez and Gerrard, our chief assets, are not suited to the latter and we had limited funds to change the entire squad given the oodles of money we had wasted and FFP restrictions. Therefore we eventually settled on a compromise by going for a medium block defence with a counterattacking style to maximise Sturridge's pace, Suarez's one on one skills (as Uruguay did) and Gerrard's passing range.
Since we decided to play Gerrard as the deepest midfielder, we needed the defence to press during the game and compress the space around the halfway line thereby leaving him less running to do.
Skrtel, for all his efforts isn't naturally good at that type of play. As I mentioned in the "back 5 not convinced" thread his instinct under pressure is to buy himself time by dropping off his man and running towards goal - a problem compounded by Mignolet who is pretty rooted to his line rather than pushing the defence out.
Now, you can TELL Skrtel that he needs to push out and get on the front foot to anticipate the ball and challenge the striker before/as he receives it but the problem is that if you mess up you can look extremely stupid if you get beaten and a pacy forward is then through on goal.
You then have the situation where the defender's confidence is shattered as he is accused of doing a David Luiz and - as we've all seen on here - a couple of mistakes like that can quickly turn fan's opinion and bring your career at the club to a swift end. I haven't personally played in front of very big crowds but, trust me, looking stupid in front of spectators is something every footballer wants to avoid - I can only imagine the pressure of doing so being asked to play an un-natural style in front of 50,000 people with slow-motion replays on live TV being beamed across the globe (and of course internet critics ready to disect every mistake the instant they happen).
So Skrtel runs back and the spaces in midfield open up for teams to exploit as Stevie hasn't got the legs to close down all the tricky 20 year olds who are burning past him. Result - open attacking games where we concede lots of goals as we saw last season.
If you look at the couple of posts I wrote about Lovren and the accompanying videos you will see why his natural style is a much better fit for the way we want to play (although we may have occasions where he gets beaten by a pacy striker).
Finally - as also mentioned in the other thread, even with compression of space in the centre, one of the main things we have to figure out is how to deal with teams who park the bus against us. Quite clearly we have bought a bunch of pacy attacking players so most team's obvious solution to this will to play like Chelsea did last year and sit back in two lines rather than letting us get in behind them and outrun them. Once they are sat back the only way to get through them is to try and outmuscle them (where they will usually have the advantage in terms of numbers and size of defenders), use one on one skills to dribble past (as we did with Suarez most of the time) or create space by stretching out their lines widthways across the pitch and using our attackers to get in amongst them (which is why Borini, with his movement, could be valuable for us next year).
If you think about it this is why a team almost never goes from, say 4th, to winning the title next year - you almost always have to finish second before properly being in the hunt. That's because once you are on a good run, the opposition changes the way they play and stops giving you so much space. A team therefore has to learn to play in a different way - when teams sit back against you you have less chance of losing to them but you have to change your play and mentality to go out and beat them when they are super-defensive. We saw this year after year with Man United as they would pile pressure on teams without worrying too much about conceding - most of the time the opposition would turn up to Old Trafford without any hope of winning a game and trying to just weather the storm that was coming their way.
So when they sit back, how do we get them to stretch out width-ways?
We do what Man City have done which is to use our fullbacks to perform overlapping runs into the corners of the field so that defenders have to follow them. This is what Premiership teams last year were unable to cope with - although Yaya Toure got all the credit, if you look back at the City goals you will see that they stretched team's defences in this way allowing Silva / Negredo / Navas / Aguero space. Zabaleta isn't the greatest dribbler in the world but he was the key to City being able to use their attacking players by his hard work running off the ball.
We, on the other hand, had Flanno who only joined the attack occasionally (as would be expected for a player at his stage) and Johnson who brought the ball upfield but would either get caught in possession, play a pass across the middle or cut inside at the edge of their box and shoot for the bottom corner - none of which would do anything to stretch the opposition defence.
Pressing high and using the fullbacks for width is the key to our system next year - this will open up Stevie's and Coutinho's passing lanes on either side of the field whilst the rest of the midfield applies pressure to close down the ball. But to do that you need the right personnel and you need to give them time to play together to learn what to do.
Simply thinking "we were good in attack but need to tighten up a bit at the back" is grossly underestimating the scale and complexity of the problems we have to solve to win the title.