WHY COPY PEP? WILDER IS TRUE KING OF DEFENCE

THE recruitment of Ruben Dias (below) from Benfica takes Pep Guardiola’s spending on defence at Manchester City to £408million in four years.

It is a great irony, then, that the biggest fault identified during his time at the club is of defensive frailty. Sheffield United, meanwhile, let in fewer goals than any club outside the top three last season, only six more than Liverpool.

Chris Wilder’s five-man back line cost less than £5m. So no surprises whose defensive strategies football slavishly follows. Clue: not Wilder’s. At Liverpool last Monday, Arsenal were knocking it about around their own six-yard box in what looked like a bad Manchester City tribute act.

No player, not even the cavalier David Luiz, looks happy to have the ball at his feet in that area against Liverpool’s high press, when often a throw-in halfway up the pitch might be re-imagined as a good outcome. Even when Arsenal did get out it was as much by luck as judgment — yet this tactic is being replicated throughout football.

What is the point in receiving the ball so deep? Further up the field, a player has options. He can go back, move sideways, push forward. Luiz, by contrast, would take the ball in a position where to turn backwards would be a corner, and to pass wide would find a full back hugging the touchline equally trapped. So, forward or bust, and that was where Liverpool stood grouped.

Yet this is Guardiola’s way and no-one dare challenge. Last season’s defence cost in excess of £300m and conceded four goals fewer than Sheffield United. Maybe if Guardiola took to copying what Wilder did everyone would be at it.