This concept doesn't work in real football though. Otherwise formations and each player's position are pointless, put any player in any position and he will perform the roles of such position anyway. The reality is it won't happen, or it won't happen efficiently. By nature Rashford will be staying up front and looking forward to attack and if you force him to backtrack to center of midfield to offer support to the 2 midfielders on losing the ball he won't be able to do it efficiently (because he has never done that before and it has never been his role, being always a forward player) and at the same time will lose his contributions in the attack because he can't focus on it. Basically you will end up playing with 10 men on the field.
You want to put a player who can work as extra man in midfield you put an attacking midfielder in such position like Periera, who will know how to do such role efficiently on both sides. Otherwise with such lineup Scholes has put, it's logical that Rashford will be a second striker not an attacking midfielder, which will unbalance the team and open us up for counters. It will look against some trash teams but whenever we are put under pressure or against a good counter attacking team, we will get destroyed.
It’s something which happens every single week in real football. Teams who line up with two forwards will look for one (or both) of them to drop in on the deepest midfield player(s) in their set defensive shape. If they are looking to press high from there, essentially that player is tasked with recognising when the opportunity to apply pressure to a centre half arises while ensuring their run is angled so that a pass to the midfielder they are responsible for is cut off. You see this all the time in games currently because pressing high is very popular and has been for a while.
When Rooney played with Van Nistelrooy he very clearly operated deeper and would track and apply pressure to deep midfield players when the team was defending. On occasion you would see Van Nistelrooy do the same while Rooney was higher, whether that be because Rooney had made a run and the move had broke down with Van Nistelrooy covering for him, or simply because they were taking turns about sharing the workload and we just happened to see Rooney there more often because it suited how both players played in both attack and defence. The instruction for one of the two to drop in was clear. Same with Rooney and Saha. Same with Rooney and Tevez - but with Tevez generally being the one to drop in. All these players are forwards, and Rooney or Tevez playing in a position off of another striker would be labelled second strikers. Defensively, the role they played was the same as what would have been expected from Ozil, Vidal, Park Ji-Sung, Iniesta or Gerrard in the same position for those teams.
Alexis Sanchez was outstanding for Udinese playing off of Di Natale, a workhorse who would always press the midfield in defence and occupy the defenders in attack. Marco Reus last year at Dortmund and Golovin playing off Dzyuba at the last World Cup, both looked to screen in front of the deepest midfield player and press alongside the striker when the opposition had the ball along the back four, and would look to drop goalside of said midfielder if the ball was able to be progressed forward. Suarez, against us, done a great job of cutting off passes to midfield, and applying pressure when he was bypassed often resulting in the ball being played right back. Haaland done something similar in a Champions League game for Salzburg this season. Griezmann, for both Atletico Madrid and France, has been supremely defensively diligent in both situations where he drops off the main striker, and where he and his strike partner both drop and work on the same line shutting down the space between themselves and their midfield pair.
Barcelona, Atletico, Valencia, Bayern, Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Juventus, Napoli, Benfica and Lyon all either play or have played a 4-4-2, or a 4-4-1-1, or 4-2-3-1, with very much a ‘forward’ rather than a ‘midfielder’ in that position in between the lead striker and the central midfielders, to varying extents, in the past two years. Recently both Leicester and Monaco built very successful seasons around shapes involving two attackers while playing in wildly different ways. Eintracht Frankfurt last year were the same, playing with both Haller and Jovic up front. Salzburg are generally giving a good account of themselves this season and, though it doesn’t look like they particularly stick to a certain formation, they tend to use a front two and very attacking support options. Our last two league opponents both use a 4-4-2. This is not merely a theoretical concept, but a practical set up which has been, and will continue to be, used abundantly.
Thought we were talking about in attack.
Centre midfielders job, like Scholes used to do, is to get in the box, whereas a defensive midfielder is tasked to sit in front of the back four and break up play.
A second striker is more someone who works in tandem more with the main striker and gets into the box more often, whilst leaving the centre midfielder to create, whereas an attacking midfielder is the link between midfield and attack and will try and assist the wingers and striker.
The wingers/wide midfielders have different roles. In a 4231, wingers tend to play as wide attacking midfielders, where priority will be on finding pockets of space in between the lines, whereas wingers in a 4411 will look to exploit wide areas.
So do you think you could set out Scholes’ lineup before a game and tell them you were playing a 4-4-1-1, and then at half time inform them that the formation was changing to a 4-2-3-1 and they would all understand these little changes in position and in what they’re supposed to be looking to do?
It’s all such basic, generic rubbish.
A centre midfielder should get in the box like Scholes used to do. Well, Scholes never played alongside another midfielder who got in the box like he used to - so was Keane not doing his job properly? Or, since a 4-4-1-1 consists of ‘centre midfielders’ and a 4-2-3-1 uses ‘defensive midfielders’, is there another formation which uses one ‘centre midfielder’ and one ‘defensive midfielder’ in a two-man midfield? What was Pirlo? Can you acknowledge the difference in how Vieira interpreted his role depending on whether he played with Gilberto Silva or Edu?
Attacking midfielder or second striker - Ballack? Lampard? Guily? Boateng? Van De Beek? Vidal? Bergkamp? Many players don’t fit your broad, sweeping descriptions.
Is there another formation for using wide attacking midfielders with a second striker? Or one for using wingers with an attacking midfielder?
It’s all nonsense. A player’s position does not determine that player’s abilities and tendencies.