Don't want ads ? Subscribe to remove them. Only £3.50 a month.

The defence, as every manager is at pains to point out, is the base of every football team. As dangerous as any team might be in attack, it needs a disciplined defence. If you score fewer than you concede, you can’t win. But if you don’t concede, you can’t lose.

Without the defence you can’t attack. If you don’t steal the ball, you can’t have the ball. Just ask Guardiola.

In modern football, teams defend from the front (as evinced by Barcelona), but the building blocks are still at the back; for most sides, that is the famous “flat four” unit.

But – and this is a big “but” – even the perfect defensive line will be exposed if it gets no protection from the midfield. A good team defence, then, is the ultimate goal of every master tactician. And, as a fan of Liverpool, who better to use as an exemplar than Rafa Benitez?

This post is for subscribers only

Member-only content - you need to subscribe to read it ! A subscription costs only £3.50 per month.

Find out what you get with your subscription, or Subscribe now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Featured, In-Depth Analysis, Subscribers Only, Talking Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.