It is not an illusion, that teamsheet you just put up has the same people but different roles. When you place Lampard in an advanced role behind the strikers you are indicating that, errr, he has an advanced attacking role behind the strikers, not a central midfield role with an anchor protecting the back four like you do here.
Can he and Petit drop deep? Sure, but you are giving us your shape and your shape indicates you have instructed players to do somethign entirely different. While a game is fluid, you always revert to A shape, otherwise you are out of control and too reliant on all 11 players being supermen who know what the others will do every time over 90 minutes!
Your shape as it was would play out in a very gung ho way. You would batter him (as I said, he would be 7-1-2 most of the time), you have superb players for doing that, but not for playing patiently. Lampard + Gerrard never worked for that reason, that midfield could not control games. Lampard, Giggs and Figo would be pushing up relentlessly and Petit and Frings would have to move further up to keep that pressing...
How would you not leave space in your half then?
As I said to Ralaks, he could actually opt for that and pull it off because he wouldn't play at such manic pace, thus wouldn't leave all that space and his team pressing/zonal defending would be more effective.
It does, teams do it all the time when they identify a major threat. Some choose not to and are set up in such a way that it isn't an issue, others just try to ride their luck. You did and couldn't get away with it. SAF in 98 tried to and did.
Doubt it, there's not a chance he would counter you without Guardiola. Rivaldo could be left unmarked then as he would mostly be chasing desperate aimless long balls.