The low block is a wage bill decision

Sides defend deep because that is what their budget can execute reliably, and pundits keep calling an economic constraint a philosophy.

A manager sets up with two banks of four thirty metres from his own goal and the studio calls it negative, unambitious, an insult to the neutral. What it usually is, is the only plan available to a squad assembled for a tenth of the opponent's wage bill, because holding a deep shape is the cheapest defensive system to staff.

The reason is worth spelling out. A high press needs athletes who can repeat high-intensity efforts for ninety minutes, and those players are expensive because the same attribute is valuable in attack. It also needs a defensive line comfortable defending huge spaces one on one, and centre backs with recovery pace cost more than centre backs who read the game while standing still. Playing out from the back needs a goalkeeper who can pass under pressure, another premium.

A low block needs none of that. It needs concentration, organisation and a willingness to be uncomfortable, which are the attributes most widely available and least well paid. A club with limited money can be genuinely competent at it inside one preseason. That is not cowardice. That is a director of football matching a system to what he can afford, which is the most sensible thing anyone in his position does all year.

Where I part company with the defenders of this approach is what happens next. Too many sides treat the block as the whole plan and give no thought to what they do with the ball when they win it, which turns a defensive strategy into a waiting game they cannot win. The block buys you possession in bad positions. If the answer is a hopeful ball to a lone forward, the shape holds for seventy minutes and loses anyway, and the manager gets criticised for the wrong reason.

The teams who do this properly spend their training week on the transition rather than the shape, because the shape is the easy part. Two passes and a runner. That is the whole margin.

Call it defensive if you like. It is a budget expressed as a formation, and the alternative for those clubs is not attacking football, it is losing by more.