For me personally I think for the vast majority of games our defence has it incredibly easy. We dominate possession and teams are afraid of pushing on because Salah, Mane and Bobby are lethal on the counter attack. However when teams actually have a go at us usually after we have run out of legs and the press has faded we concede too many goals.
It seems that's probably a function of the way we play though, right? When we don't concede goals, it's because we're pressing. When we do concede goals, it's sometimes because we ran out of gas from pressing. Not exactly Lovren's fault?
I'm not here to be Lovren's no.1 advocate here. If we could find a second centre half that can organise the defence and do all the other good stuff Virgil does, I'd be a keen bean for it. But I don't think it's okay to insist that an assumption that players like that are abundantly available, without evidence. The statistics don't bear that out. No, statistics are not everything, but they tell a
more objective version of the story than: 'I think there are loads of better players for us than Lovren' (note I've used inverted commas and not quotation marks).
Fact of the matter is, when you get right down to it, none of us know jack shit about who's good and who isn't. Relying on the 'eye test' of amateur observers to make a judgment about what qualities a player brings and how well they fit with the way we play, is fair enough to have a conversation, but it doesn't really add much value to the conversation. Looking at the numbers gets us something above and beyond your opinion and mine, because they provide more facts than is available based on casual observation.
Anyway, I think having Fabinho this season is going to make a huge different to our defence. Regardless of who plays at CB, we're going to do a lot better than we did first half last season, because they'll have a shield the way our defence hasn't had since prime Lucas - the version of Lucas whose partner was Jay Spearing. Exciting times.