Moving the wing back inside quietly cost teams their set pieces

The tactical case for inverted wing backs is well made, but nobody costs in what happens to the delivery and the second ball.

Set pieces are where the argument shows up, and almost nobody makes it. Pull your wing backs into midfield and you have solved a rest defence problem, added a passer in the centre and made your build-up harder to press. You have also, without meaning to, changed who takes your corners and where your best crosser is standing when the ball goes out for one.

Think about what a traditional wide defender actually is. He is a player selected in part because he can strike a moving ball across sixty yards with the outside of his foot. Put him at the base of midfield and the club stops recruiting for that trait, because the position now asks for tight-space passing and body orientation under pressure. Two transfer windows later the same club is taking corners with a left-footed midfielder who is fine, and has nobody who can hit a first-time cross from a standing start on the run.

The second-ball problem is worse and more immediate. On an attacking corner the wing backs are usually the two players positioned at the edge of the box to collect clearances. Their job is to be quick to a loose ball and comfortable striking it, which is why wide defenders were used. A side built around inverted roles has those bodies further inside and slower to the wide clearance, and the wide clearance is the one that becomes a counter-attack.

None of this makes the idea wrong. It makes it a trade, and trades should be priced. A team that gains a small amount of control in every open-play phase and loses a fraction of a goal per season from dead balls has probably still won. But dead balls are where the poorer team steals a match, which means the trade is not symmetric across the table. The side with less of the ball needs its corners more.

My suspicion is that this is one reason so many mid-table sides copied the shape and got nothing from it. They took the structural benefit, which is small when you do not have the ball, and paid the set-piece cost, which is large when set pieces are a quarter of your goals.

Copy the idea if you have the players for it. If your season depends on scoring from corners, keep your crosser where the corners are.