At wits end with my Central Defenders lack of man marking!

[Hootieleece]

I am playing a 4-2-3-1 Wide with 2 CD's with Defend duty.

I have tried everything to get my defenders to mark or close down the opposition Strikers.

The strikers seem to blow by them and get ignored whether I am playing offside trap or not.

My players are best as "limited" defenders, does this have anything to do with it?

I am playing in the C league in Italy and Central defenders best roles are hard to find. Also in lower leagues in general.

[Jambo98]

As always, i am afraid, more info is needed if you want proper advice rather than generic "guesswork"

Could you perhaps supply:

Your starting mentality

Your team shape/fluidity

Roles/duty of all players (not just back 4)

Any TI you use

Any PI you use for the players in question.

Also a screenshot of the player attributes might not be a bad idea.

Finally, a bit more idea of what you actually want? You say "man marking" in the title but i would be a bit surprised if that is what you mean. True man marking is pretty much dead as a concept, and certainly for CD's it is fairly obsolete. It does sound more like a general frustration that they do not engage the striker when he comes near or leave too much space etc. A bit more detail on the problem would be good

Then we can try and help

[Hootieleece]

I am adding the requested info with the following Screenshots:

The first 2 are my team shape and fluidity and the TI's

The other 3 are the screenshots of the player attributes of my 3 Best CD's.

The Three Players:

I often use the ManMark and Tackling Normal under Opposition instructions PreMatch. I have tried man marking the Strikers under individual players also.

[auduron]

The first thing that jumps out to me, especially with "The strikers seem to blow by them" in your opening post, is the Acceleration/Pace of your 2 starting CB's (per your first screen shot) of 7/8 and 9/10 respectively. I know this is the Serie C, but those are not the most attractive #'s to see.

Both have a concentration of 10 as well.

Couple this with your FB's being Automatic, and with you playing on Control - they will be more Attacking, leaving your very slow CB's fairly isolated. With the CB's Closing down more, and having them man mark (per your TI's) - any fast striker will be able to blow by them.

Right off the bat, I would start your 3rd CB (seems better a better option over either, IMO), and put your FB's on support.

[Jambo98]

Heavy closing down without a DM will pull your defenders out of position often. Tackle harder will likely not help matters either, as they dont have great stats and will dive in and miss tackles, which will allow the strikers a clear run. Tighter marking will just let strikers roll them easily, and the offside trap is likely suicidal with this level of players.

I would suggest wind back all of the defending TI's (possibly leave "Close down more" if it relates to your overall team approach, but consider PI to prevent the CB's falling into the same trap.

Also consider some protection for your defenders. The CM(d) is likely close down a lot, and his partner is going to be a CM(a) with that control mentality, meaning you are light in the middle.

[Hootieleece]

I seem to score plenty of goals with my approach but seem to get killed by counter attacks. That is why I want to man mark the Strikers. My Assistant seems to love to tell me we need to man mark this striker AFTER I told them in opposition instructions. Also the AI seems to park the bus against me even though I am 40-1 odds of winning the league. The reason I play the offside trap is that it seems all the AI teams play it against me. I have one goal a game taken away for offsides. It also works against the AI teams when they open up.

The Third Guy is my Gem and I am retraining him as a RD........

I can't EVER seem to find CD's with pace better than 10.........whatever country I play in....... and Italy has legions of Defenders available!

[Dr. Hook]

You get killed by counter-attacks because as Jambo and Auduron pointed out, you have an attack oriented setup which is leaving your defenders hanging in the breeze. They are slow and will get burned. What I would do, with the setup you are playing with, is stop the high pressing with the centerbacks, and play with a deeper defensive line. Also the offside trap will burn you with slow defenders. If the ball gets past, you are hosed, right? You have to play tactically with what you have, and what you have are mediocre centerbacks in the pace department. I also agree with Auduron on using Angell as a centerback. At least until you get someone with a bit more pace.

[AndrikoDS]

I have been having similar problems with the same tactic, especially with the long ball-counter attack. I have managed to largely solve it by dropping the mentality down to defensive, and using a CM(s) and DLP(d) in the middle, though I have proven a bit weak to those annoying crosses and have found my team being a bit unwilling to engage the opposition whilst they pass the ball around, so put 'close down more' on, and took off 'shorter passing' (but left on retain possession) which I think was making the team play too narrow. It's still a work in progress, but these things have helped a bit.

Another thing I would say is, having players on the 'Automatic' setting is, in my experience, not a good idea. On your tactic, Wingbacks on defend or FBs on support might be a better option.

[Hootieleece]

I was planning on playing Angeli as one of my starting center backs with Avellini and have the third as a sub. I often use the Ass Man to fill my lineup. Since I trained Angeli as a RD for cover but he has become the best RD according to Quick Picks.

On a related note: How would one go about changing the defensive line? I'm trying to control possession in Opponents half to make up for most of my deficiencies in defense.

[Lilah]

Why not just pull the central midfielders back into the dm strata and concede the midfield space if they are getting beat from through/long balls into the space behind them. A DM/D and DLP/S could solve your problems. The DLP/S will get forward enough to link up with the attack or put it out to a full back.

[bababooey]

I was planning on playing Angeli as one of my starting center backs with Avellini and have the third as a sub. I often use the Ass Man to fill my lineup. Since I trained Angeli as a RD for cover but he has become the best RD according to Quick Picks.

On a related note: How would one go about changing the defensive line? I'm trying to control possession in Opponents half to make up for most of my deficiencies in defense.

If you want to control possession in the opponents half then you HAVE to play a high line to take away the space they want, and gain the space you want. So that doesn't really make sense.

You would be better off playing with a lower d-line seeing as your CB's are quite slow. Or you could benefit from using a more cautious overall approach to your tactical style.

To adjust the D-Line you have to select the corresponding team instruction (push higher, much higher, drop deeper, much deeper) and also recognize that each team mentality sets a baseline for your D-Line. From contain to overload your D-Line increases closer to the halfway line. The TI's will adjust from that baseline... So if you have "attacking" as your mentality, but then use "drop deeper" your D-Line will probably look like a D-Line as if you were playing on "control". Somewhere just below the half line.

[AndrikoDS]

I wouldn't trust the Ass Man to pick flowers, never mind my line up! :o

As for the 'control possesion in opponents half', I think that would be going down a high pressing route (maybe), which I believe is hard. However, I have had some success doing this myself with: close down more/ retain possession/ work ball into box/ much lower tempo (and if you have any players who are too keen to take long shots, or keep missing shots, tell them to shoot less often) combined with defensive mentality. I find this tends to give my team high rates of possession, and alot of passing outside the opposition penalty area.

[bababooey]

Also, central defenders have had issues with "stopper type behavior" since the last FM. I hope SI is working on it because it's really an unacceptable defending issue. But, this has been brought up countless times so..

[thomit]

Seems to be a bit of confusion in a couple of the posts here: Playing Control mentality, a FB on "automatic" is exactly the same as a FB on "support" duty. Their duties will not change until your team mentality is "attacking" or higher; then they will get "attacking" duty. When your mentality drops to "defensive" or lower, they'll change to "defend" duty.

In short: all that "auto" does is to change the players' duties according to what your team mentality is.

[bababooey]

Right. I don't think automatic duties are ever really useful or ideal. Unless you're switching mentality constantly but, that seems odd to me too.

[Jambo98]

Yup i have no idea why they are even still in the game.

When you switch mentality, you inherently change the mentality for all players in your team (the extent of which also relates to Team Structure). So if you go from "Counter" to "Control", then it will change the base mentality for the FB. It will not change it from "support" to "attack", but behind that duty the mentality will increase.

[Hootieleece]

I am relatively new to the game. I bought FM14 about 10 Months ago and don't really understand the nuances of the game or of IRL Football/Soccer. I am trying to understand "man marking", but it doesn't seem to mean what I think it means.

I have played a few games after changing mentality to counter. I don't give up as many goals but I don't score as many either. My team seems to give the opposition possession of the ball and just let them take shots on my goalie.

I think the best thing for me to do is find faster CB's. The frustrating part is that my team's always seem to come in just outside of the playoffs due to a couple of these goals.

thanks for the help. It has given me something to think about.

[Dr. Hook]

I am relatively new to the game. I bought FM14 about 10 Months ago and don't really understand the nuances of the game or of IRL Football/Soccer. I am trying to understand "man marking", but it doesn't seem to mean what I think it means.

I have played a few games after changing mentality to counter. I don't give up as many goals but I don't score as many either. My team seems to give the opposition possession of the ball and just let them take shots on my goalie.

I think the best thing for me to do is find faster CB's. The frustrating part is that my team's always seem to come in just outside of the playoffs due to a couple of these goals.

thanks for the help. It has given me something to think about.

So basically man marking is guarding or checking man for man. In basketball it would be the equivalent of man to man defense. You set this as you have been through opposition instructions where you assign a specific player to Mark, or guard, a specific man. Otherwise, your defense is a zone and players mark the man that enters their zone. Marking is important either way, beccause you want your defenders to get in the opponents way and maintain good position on them. Tight marking would be to ask them to get up in their grill so to speak

I don't mean to insult you by speaking so elementarily, but I am not sure how much you know or don't