I don’t find it productive when an attack has three layers: a defensive line, one midfielder, and a straight line of forwards. It makes for a lazy attack with few advantages and no initiative or space. I don’t understand why so many teams play this way.

As someone who hates double pivots, I’m not saying you always have to have two midfielders anchoring the midfield, but defenders will always get drawn to a pass backwards to a midfielder or forward, even if that pass is not made.

They can most times ignore a pass to a defender because the defender’s touch and depth of pass are not going to offer a threat, and the distance between the defender and the forwards is too big. The only space to attack is on the wings.

I find it counterproductive to the goals of an attacking team to offer only two passes out of pressure: back to the defender or out to the wing. It is so easy for the opposition’s defense to cut off that pass once the ball is played forward.

Look at how much more space there is when you have one midfielder drop. They don’t have to stay there permanently, but when you don’t have a midfielder or forward dropping to offer a pass backwards, the opposition has no reason to press.

You can give them a reason to step forward by dribbling, but when you have that quick forward and backward pass open centrally, more pockets open centrally.

More pockets open centrally, the opposition collapses on the ball centrally, then you have space wide.

Manchester United gave me the motivation to write this after their game against Hull City, but there have been hundreds of other teams’ games prior where this has been in the back of my head. Bayern Munich showed later in the day against Borussia Dortmund what you are supposed to do instead.