Ok let's play stats.
Goal difference isn't a measure of how well your defence is performing its a rather convoluted measure of Attacking performance and defensive performance. The only thing is shows is that we concede more than we score:
- Our goals conceded isn't that high, 39, 4 more than average (which is 35)
- However we have only scored 19 which is 16 below the average (which is also 35, obviously). This demonstrates that our problem is not so much defensively as it is attacking.
If you look at just the bottom 10 it becomes more interesting, the average conceded in the bottom 10 in 39, so were bang average in out mini league as it were
however the average scored is 25 so were still short of goals even when compared to our rivals.
There is also the consideration that 16 of our conceded goals were in three games (Man City, Liverpool and Arsenal) yes, in those games we capitulated but its not a indication of systemically poor defence and weather 1-0 or 7-0 the huber of points allocated is the same. This means that in our other 23 games we've an average of exactly once per game, plus 9 of those games were clean sheets (a measure that is exclusively about the defensive performance).
So I feel that in general we are not terrible at the back, we just aren't scoring the goals, which was my original point.