Good defending isn’t 90 minutes of desperate last ditch interventions and crosses flying into your box. And you can still defend well and play decent football through midfield.
I have no problem with us sitting deeper and being more pragmatic, especially when defending a lead away at a decent team, but that was just desperate stuff, and keeping that narrow shape in midfield against their kind of 343 with two non footballers in midfield just invited constant pressure and meant we couldn’t play out from it or transition on the counter either.