I actually think for the most part, our teams under SAF in the last few years weren't physical, either, outside of maybe Ferdinand, Vidic, and Scholes (maybe 1 or 2 others?). We offset a lot of this by playing a fast attacking game that used all of our player's skill sets and put teams like West Ham and Stoke at a disadvantage. By having two world-class CBs and very good defenders like Brown and younger Evans we had a lot of backbone that took pressure off the players in front of them and allowed them to play their game.
Now, we play a game so lacking in energy and drive that we basically slow up the game for teams like West Ham to impose themselves on us. And now we have Smalling and Blind as the two players trying to spearhead everything from the back, one of whom is poor with the ball and the other who gets bullied against the right kind of opposition. It just bewilders me that CB was a position where we didn't strengthen at all in the last couple of transfer windows and we actually played with the idea of pairing Blind with Jones to start the season, which was dashed by Jones getting injured yet again.
