Rest defence is the real reason your full back stopped overlapping

The shape a team holds while it still has the ball now dictates attacking freedom more than any coaching instruction.

Nobody watches the players who are not involved. That is where the modern game is decided, and it explains a change in wide play that gets blamed on everything else.

Rest defence is the arrangement of the players behind the ball during your own possession, held not because you expect to lose it but because you will, eventually, and the five seconds after that are the most dangerous of the match. If a side attacks with eight and loses the ball, the two who remain face a break in space, and space is what turns a half chance into a goal. So teams now fix a number, usually three or four, who do not go beyond a certain line no matter what the attack looks like.

That number has to come from somewhere. Centre backs are already there. The holding midfielder is already there. The third or fourth body has to be a full back, and once one full back is committed to rest defence, the other is carrying the whole width of the pitch on his own. Which is precisely why you now see one wide defender flying and one tucked in, rather than two overlapping, and why the overlap that does happen looks late.

The fashionable explanation is that full backs invert to control midfield. True in some sides. But plenty of teams that never talk about controlling midfield have also stopped sending both full backs forward, and the reason is simply that they have counted the bodies and do not like the answer.

Here is my complaint. Rest defence gets set as a fixed rule when it should be a variable. Against a team with two quick forwards who stay high, four is right. Against a side that drops everybody behind the ball and needs six seconds to break out, four is an enormous waste of attacking resource, and holding it is a coach protecting himself from the one goal he will be asked about.

The boldest thing a manager can do now is not a formation change. It is to look at the opposition front line, decide that two is enough back there, and let both full backs go.