Everybody marks the six yard box and nobody marks the cutback

Open play crosses get defended as though the danger is aerial, while the highest quality chance in the sequence arrives along the floor.

A winger reaches the byline. Watch the defenders, not the ball. Two centre backs are attached to strikers between the posts, a full back is at the near post, and a midfielder is somewhere around the penalty spot facing the wrong way. Now the ball is rolled backwards, twelve yards out, to a player arriving at pace with the whole goal in front of him.

That chance is worth far more than any header from the same sequence, and it is defended by whoever happens to have turned around in time.

The reason is that our marking habits came from an era when a cross meant a high ball. Zonal schemes in open play are built around the aerial contest: cover the six yard box, attack the flight, win the first contact. All of that is sound and none of it addresses a low ball pulled back behind the defensive line into a space every defender has his back to.

Assigning the job is where it gets awkward. The obvious candidate is the deepest midfielder, who is asked to drop into the area, ignore everything in front of him and stand in a space that may never be used. It feels wasteful. It looks passive on video. And the moment your team is under pressure, that player's instinct is to help with the bodies he can see, which is exactly the wrong instinct, because the bodies he can see are already marked.

I would make it a named role, not a principle. One player, by name, whose only job on an open play cross from the byline is the cutback, and who is not permitted to be dragged into the box under any circumstances. Teams do this on defensive corners without hesitation, posting a man on the edge, and yet the same discipline evaporates in open play where the sequences are less rehearsed.

There is a legitimate cost. Committing a body to a space that is used in perhaps a fifth of crosses means being outnumbered in the air in the other four, and against a genuinely tall side that trade may be wrong.

But look at where the goals come from. The high ball into a crowded six yard box is one of the least productive attacking actions in football. The cutback is one of the most. We keep defending the first one.