Conceding goals/chances like this on a regular basis

Absolutely straight forward. The midfield feeds the ball into a striker, who has a central defender on either side of him, just inside the box. Team settings are zonal marking with closing down set to 'press more', striker in question has an opposition instruction of 'tight marking' on him...

[video=youtube;TfTcduYgttA]

I really don't understand this. Fair enough, one central defender has left it to the other to mark the striker. So what does he do? Sort of stands still, and then slightly moves away from the striker, who takes the ball, turns, and has a one on one with the keeper. Fair enough if the defender is on his shoulder and he is good enough to skin him and get a shot off, but it's not that at all.

How many more versions of the game is it going to take before defenders can perform basic tasks?

I want to fall in love with '11 so much but it seems no progress has been made on the area which has bugged me the most about '09 and '10, which is fundamental defending.

That's been the common way things have worked since I started playing FM10... can be annoying. But to be honest I kind of make my offense around it and get the best keeper I can find for him to stop those shots. Works pretty well considering my team is leading both scored and fewest conceded in the league. Not bragging, just saying it works.

That said, the defense -still- has plenty of bad AI problems, including some new ones with defenders completely leaving their positions, especially the fullbacks. They are consistently letting wingers get in behind them. I've even seen free kicks from the opponents side of the field where the winger is standing all alone well behind the fullback. It just gets worse because then a CB will go close down the lone winger and leave a strike wide open for the cross. Yet another reason to invest in a top shot stopping keeper.

I feel your pain. I concede a lot of goals just like the one in your clip. I also leak goals from crosses like there is no tomorrow. I seem to be completely at a loss on how to stop my opponents wingers from delivering perfect crosses to unmarked strikers. I lack the ability to pressure wingers and effectively mark or at least pressure my opponents strikers enough to make them miss. I suck at this game...

Try using defensive positioning with the match prep, seemed to help a lot for me at the start of my save. Beyond that are to telling players who to mark if their strikers are particular threats? Only other thing would be get CB's that are better in the air and at marking. *shrug*

Try using defensive positioning with the match prep, seemed to help a lot for me at the start of my save. Beyond that are to telling players who to mark if their strikers are particular threats? Only other thing would be get CB's that are better in the air and at marking. *shrug*

That would be the obvious thing to do. But I'm currently unable to free up my roster by selling some players of to bring in better headers I need to cut off the supply from the flanks and make it more difficult for my opponents to deliver good balls into the box, but I can't since I'm ****.

I was seeing quite a few goals like the one you have posted here and the only way i found of stopping it was to play with 3 CB's, either as a 3-5-2 or 5-3-2, it still happens from time to time but I find generally that the middle CB tends to close down strikers who come through the middle.