He hardly played last season, Real suffered in parts in defence because he was out injured so much, big parts of the season. Their defence was quite mean force when he was playing. Really fiercely physical force of nature kinda defender. And Reals drawbacks in defence is their disoriented defensive organization. they have NONE. Its not about the lack of quality in the likes of Pepe, who really is a class defender (wanted him since his Porto days, and as you can recall, we were after him), but how they defend as headless chickens as a unit (and have zero cover from their midfield).
I mean, our defence is strong as a unit because they are tactically close knit group that function as one mostly, and thats despite our back 4 mainly being average players, and players who are of the lesser quality of the likes of Ramos, Pepe, Heinze etc.