You really can't say anything these days without offending the snowflake, race-card playing PC brigade.
Getting us back on topic and away from Politics.... I noticed Ostersunds lined up in almost my ideal zonal marking set-up against Bilbao in the Europa League on Thursday, went back through their stats for the season - 1 goal conceded from 127 corners faced. I'd like the line of 3 players to drop back a foot or so, but other than that, near perfection.
Agreed, let Silva do all the fancy rubbish and get someone British with a no nonsense approach in to sort out the defence.
Silva blamed Cleverley for not marking Fletcher, but I'm sure Fletcher's shot would have been cleared if we had a man on the post. We know first hand the importance of that near post, as Leeds would have been 1-0 up in 2006 and we might not have had that wonderful day. Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk
Why stop at just having two men on the posts? Why don’t managers put all 11 players on the goal line, and form a human wall? The problem with arguments against zonal marking/ goals being scored without a man on the posts, are that they are only highlighted when things go wrong. It ignores the number of times things go well. Nobody on MOTD has praised Man City’s corner defending. Why would they? Watch a match however, and they win so many balls against men that are bigger. There are a number of factors at play when a corner is taken. It’s not just the first ball (which we seem to be struggling with right now). Having a player on the post means that if the ball is played short, or given to a player outside the box, or flicked on, every attacker can move right into the 6 yard box knowing they are being played onside. This makes it far more risky to defend against. Any touch off defender or attacker could lead to a goal, and the keeper will be entirely unsighted. Similarly with man marking, MOTD presenters praise the cunning nature of the attacker who blocks the run of the defender, giving another attacker a free header at goal. But they never link this to the fact it is an obvious weakness of man marking. If attackers block the one man-marker, which is fairly easy to do, then you’re in a lot of trouble as a defender. I think we have three problems. 1. Our defenders aren’t brave enough in their zone, and continuously get outfought when the ball is there to win. I think this would happen with man marking also. 2. We don’t have enough leaders in the team, and the communication is very poor on the pitch. Someone should have been screaming at Cleverley to get closer to Fletcher. 3. The way we are set up is extremely poor. We don’t block runners, we are weak reacting to short corners, we don’t protect the area just in front of the back post well enough, and we have no one ready to break if we do win the ball. Silva needs to take the blame for this, although it surprises me as I swear I remember Hull scoring dramatic counter attacks from well defended corner from his time at Hull. The difference perhaps being that they had strong, brave, experiences and communicative central defenders.
Nope. There's a lot wrong with it. 1. Allowing players to have a run on you, so that they can jump with more momentum to get their head to the ball first. 2. The very fact that zonal marking only works if you implement it properly, makes it a risky tactic to use, especially to begin with. Man marking is a safer option and you find far less issues with it. Just think how much zonal marking has been criticised by the media compared to man marking. 3. Or even just look at the debate on here. Nobody has debated whether man marking is effective, yet there's a debate as to whether zonal is effective. Surely the fact we are debating one and not the other suggests one of them is ****? 4. As simple as it sounds, man marking allows your taller, stronger players to mark the taller stronger opponents. Zonal does not always allow this. 5. I don't know why I typed all this out as I know you're views on this wont change
1. That is indeed a big flaw, but it's easily fixable (as pointed out above) 2. Man marking doesn't get the blame, the player does instead - does that mean man marking is therefore more effective that zonal? Not at all, just means you have a scapegoat. 3. Just because the way we defend zonally is ****, doesn't mean we should write off zonal marking entirely as a result. 4. You can adapt/plan for this easily enough! 5. Yup
There was a time when we had Mackay, DeMerit, Carlisle and Sh*ttu all on the books at the same time. Now regardless of zonal or M2M, we need some CB’s who had their qualities of attacking the ball defensively and being organised. Whether zonal has its merits or not, it’s plainly obvious it’s not suited to us and the defenders we have at this time.
As has been mentioned elsewhere (another thread, possibly) - we've been poor defensively since the second half of our season under Flores. Regardless of personnel/shape/systems/formations - it's almost like it's something that is deep-seated into our club. Whether we adopt Reids approach described above, or switch back to man marking for our next match (and changed a few players around for those who have been injured) - I'd be certain that we'd still be suspect at defending situations that should be routine for any well-drilled defensive unit. I don't think it's going to change over night, but hopefully a gradual improvement is noticeable and we continue to score goals. Therefore, by the time the latter part of the season comes around we're actually stronger and winning games - as opposed to the previous two seasons!
Yup.. We will ditch it, then 6m from now reminisce about how great it was and yearn for Silva to bring it back.
I have, from time to time, wondered what would have happened if they had kept Dyche on. We were already seeing signs of how good he was after just one season, (people realising it was him, not Mackay, with the real talent). Despite his success at Burnley I suspect he will overlooked by 'big' clubs because he will be stereotyped as a Pulis/Alladyce type pragmatic manager of journeymen who would not be able to command the respect of 'top-drawer' players. If that is how he's viewed then they've got it wrong, I think.
A good post. In short, any system only works as well as the capabilities and efforts of the people who are supposed to be enacting it.
Zone marking is simple really. The idea being that each player is designated an area to cover and when an opposition player enters that area they are picked up. When they leave that area they should be passed along the line to the next player. It means you can build a defensive wall with shared responsibility and place specific defenders in positions to attack the ball as the whole concept is all ball orientated. But you must attack the ball. In reality if you are marking M2M and you are standing off and not taking runners then in effect you are playing a week zone. The problem comes with zones if you do not move together and fail to attack the ball. Which in turn leads to opposition players being able to attack the ball. I feel is what you see with the lads at the moment. This has to be solved by good coaching and repetition in practise.
It's this bloody player power thing. Dyche should be able to walk into any club and tell superstar players that he's not there for their approval, or to be their mate, he's there to furking well tell them what to do and they'd better furking well do it.
If Dyche is an example of ‘Let’s have an ex-CB as manager to sort out the defence’, I would raise you Tony Adams, Gary Neville, Steve Bould, Robert Page and Neil Cox as evidence that fact isn’t always true.
I'm not sure anybody said that. I can say Dyche is a good coach because he is demonstrably a good coach. But so far he has specialised in making something of sow's ears - first a badly depleted Watford and then relative small club Burnley. BTW I'm not suggesting he will ever return to Watford - too many people would have to lose face for that.
