I'm not sure about this blaming of the defense, if I'm honest. How come they can cope with all the attacking power of the top six teams, but fail against the bottom teams?
I think our problem is more mental, we always concede when we slow the game down or try to keep it steady. We need to play with more intensity and focus. We do that quite well when attacking, but we switch off when defending or trying to see a game out. Against Palace you could feel both their goal coming, not because they got into the game better, but because we got sloppy and messy for minutes before that. We won't improve our record against bottom teams until we fix that.
Our system leaves our centre-backs exposed, look at what Allardyce said after the game:
"Liverpool at home play a superb attacking style in terms of football which means that both full-backs will go right up the pitch. It is very similar to Arsenal which means (Joel) Matip and (Dejan) Lovren are very exposed," he said.
If someone like Allardyce can spot this then it’s fairly likely everyone else has too.
The top teams play a more passing style of football so our press becomes more of weapon and helps us defensively but the lower teams bypass it will long balls through the channels. The concern is, given our record against the top teams, they will switch their tactics to a more direct approach to bypass our press, much like United did in both games.