No team plays the same formation in attack as defence these days, so a team's starting position is kind of moot anyway. Most big teams these days play a sort of 3-box-3 formation in possession, which pretty requires you have at least one player who plays in a sort of hybrid role if you want a back 4 to go with it. City, Liverpool and Arsenal all often start with a single nominal midfielder but have defenders they like to bring into midfield (Stones, TAA, Zinchenko). Spurs do it by having at least one FB really high up the pitch, particularly Porro, to generate the same 3-4-3 in possession.
I think that wanting our FBs to play as attackers is a mis-reading of their qualities. Shaw, Dalot and AWB have a combined career total of 37 assists in 515 appearances, which is honestly awful. They're simply not goal creators.
A better bet in my opinion given our squad is to follow the template that Liverpool, Arsenal and City now have, which is to start with a nominal single midfielder on paper and support them with defenders stepping up to make a midfield box.
For some reason though our transitions this season have been dreadful and wrecked this. I suspect the ability of the players, the injuries and the coaching team all take some responsibility here. If you go back to the Arsenal game, we actually did it really well in that game. But in most other games we struggle with the formation change, which is why we keep getting cut apart on the counter. There's something to be said for being conservative in the short term, to get our form back, but longer term playing with 6 players continually deep isn't going to cut it.
