Gustavo Poyet pinpointed his team's defence as the reason for Shanghai Shenhua's struggles as their slide down the Chinese Super League standings continued.
Shenhua kicked off their campaign with a 4-0 thrashing of Jiangsu Suning, last season's runners-up, but have picked up just one point since and were beaten 4-2 by Manuel Pellegrini's Hebei CFFC on Saturday.
The result saw Shenhua slip to 11th in the 16-team league having conceded seven times in four matches and Poyet does not believe the return of South Korea international defender Kim Kee-hee will be enough to address his team's issues.
"I know since last year we have been having issues in the air in defence and we trained particularly on that, but it was still a shortcoming," Poyet, who was appointed during the close season, said.
"I think even with Kim Kee-Hee, they can still score against us. It was not only about the central defenders but also the full-backs.
"We haven't done well in defence, even though this defensive combination isn't our regular one it should not be seen as an excuse."
Shenhua finished in fourth place last year under Gregorio Manzano and had high hopes for the season following the signing of Carlos Tevez from Boca Juniors, but they failed to qualify for the group stages of the Asian Champions League in addition to their poor start to the domestic season.
The defeat was Shenhua's second in a row on the road after last week's loss at the hands of Beijing Guoan, and their form away from home is a continuation of similar struggles in the latter stages of 2016.
"Before the match against Beijing I said I wished to see why it was said that Shenhua was bad at away games," Poyet said. "After these two rounds I know I have to find a solution."
Meanwhile, Sun Ke scored the only goal of the game as Fabio Cannavaro's Tianjin Quanjian moved up to seventh with a 1-0 win over Yanbian Funde on Sunday.
Tianjin, winners of last season's second division title, are a point ahead of Liaoning Whowin, who shared the points in a 1-1 draw with Changchun Yatai in the day's other game that saw Changchun move off the bottom of the standings, to be replaced by last season's CSL runners-up, Jiangsu Suning.