Help with defense please!

[DesertRed]

This is the formation I play.

 

Team Instructions:

 

I have a few questions regarding the goals i have been conceding. Any help will be appreciated guys.

Below are the screen shots of a goal conceded at Pool away.

 

Opposition fullbacks are in miles of space. Can I nullify this space by playing less narrow? Also it doesn't help that my Right Wing back Timbo has followed Coutinho inside. He has no Player intruction to suggest tight marking on a specific player. Why did he leave his position and follow opposition winger all the way inside?

 

 

Their LB has the ball and we seem to be in a decent position to deal with a cross that is so obviously coming. Salah is attacking the box and Shaw should have him covered right?

 

 

 

[DesertRed]

Wrong! my defense is busy ball watching as Salah scores.

Some thing is obviously wrong. Is it the team's lack of width? Are we too deep?  Also please have a look at my Cbs and suggest if i should be playing one of them on cover and remove offside trap from TI?

I need you tactical gurus to help me figure out what i might be doing wrong. 

 

[IscoDisco]

31 minutes ago, DesertRed said:

Opposition fullbacks are in miles of space. Can I nullify this space by playing less narrow? Also it doesn't help that my Right Wing back Timbo has followed Coutinho inside. He has no Player intruction to suggest tight marking on a specific player. Why did he leave his position and follow opposition winger all the way inside?

You have the Team Instruction - Tighter Marking. 

You are playing on a very low tempo with short passing with the Team Shape on structured. With 5 players on Support and 4 players on Defend, who is going to attack if there are instructed to play Structured and restrict themselves in there own area? This already cuts of your attacking ability. This also means that the Look for the Overlap is useless because your WB's will probably just sit around the halfway line at most, doing nothing. At this rate you just invite the opponent to come at you. 

[MirsoFM]

since you want to play 3 at the back, and you dont use wingers at all, the only solution for this, without changing the way you want to play, is to make your wing backs play as Inverted Wing Backs. Why?

Because those holes you got on the flanks in defense when they attack you, will be covered with IWBs, and at the same time, you will have them up front when you attack. Just make sure, because IWBs go into middle, that you instruct them to run Wide when your team has the ball.

Again, i repeat, i did not want to change the way you want to play, i just suggest what you can do, in this kind of system, to be more effective in closing down that large space you have in defence, when they attack you. 

I hope this will help at least a lil bit.

[A.Pierfrancesco]

1 hour ago, MirsoFM said:

since you want to play 3 at the back, and you dont use wingers at all, the only solution for this, without changing the way you want to play, is to make your wing backs play as Inverted Wing Backs. Why?

Because those holes you got on the flanks in defense when they attack you, will be covered with IWBs, and at the same time, you will have them up front when you attack. Just make sure, because IWBs go into middle, that you instruct them to run Wide when your team has the ball.

Again, i repeat, i did not want to change the way you want to play, i just suggest what you can do, in this kind of system, to be more effective in closing down that large space you have in defence, when they attack you. 

I hope this will help at least a lil bit.

This is not possibile, IWBs have hardcoded PI to cut inside with the ball and stay narrower, so they will not go wide when the team has the ball. Moreover if you do not use any wide player in front the IWBs will act as normal wing back since there is no one to provide width.  

[looping]

On ‎29‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 14:40, DesertRed said:

Opposition fullbacks are in miles of space

When defending, the deeper, the narrower. Try pushing you def line up so you will defend higher (and wider).

[WhyMe]

Hi DesertRed,

I think your problem is currently you have a number of team instructions that either don't do anything with the formation you have or are unhelpful for the type of football you want to play and the team you are.  This means you will lose the ball more often than you should and thus invite pressure. 

Firstly, the look for overlap instruction doesn't do anything when you don't play 2 men on the flanks, it is totally redundant for formations with wingbacks.  Secondly your formation is already narrow so by telling your team to play narrower you are constricting the space making it harder for your team.  This is exacerbated by the fact that you are playing as Man United so you can expect a lot of teams to play defensive football against you which means you need to create space not restrict it. 

Your midfield formation combined with roles and duties is probably unbalanced as well depending on whether or not you have any PIs for the central two but the DMC is certainly a problem.  Firstly, both the two central mids are on support duty as are both the wingbacks and so your forwards are probably getting a bit isolated.  Either give one of them an attack duty or at the very least a PI to "get further forward".  Ideally, I would give the left hand mid an attack duty (or PI) and the right hand wingback an attack duty as well to get your forwards more support.  Finally I would make the DLP a support duty as well.  A support DLP will still stay behind the ball (due to his hold position PI) but he will provide a more effective possession recycling option due to his slightly more advanced position and might even get the odd assist as well. 

Last but not least the defense, change your 3 CBs to a ST-C-ST combination with the central cover defender being your best defensive physical specimen (i.e. good height and speed along with defensive attributes), add to this a close down less instruction to your wingbacks and you should become more solid defensively.  This will mean that when your wingbacks get ganged up on two on one the centre back on their side will come to help at least some of the time.

There are a few things that you might want to bear in mind if you still struggle.  If you are struggling for space against defensive sides then changing the forward combo might be useful e.g. change the DLF to a CF-s or the AF-a to a CF-a/treq.  I wouldn't do this all the time necessarily but it can be worth a go when you are struggling for chances.

 

Hope this helps.

[summatsupeer]

I'll try and keep this simple, as I think its a combination of simple things:

1. You should be looking before your first screenshot for the cause, everything after is more a consequence of events. I'd ignore Shaw getting beaten by a quality whipped in cross that's behind the d-line, to high for the GK+CBs and drops onto the forwards head.
2. The player making the mistake, Fosu-Mensah is probably the weakest player in the game, how much is his attributes and how much is your tactic is unclear since your first screenshot is a bit late.
3. I'm betting your WBR's closing down setting is probably 3/4 of max?  That is likely to contribute to him closing down Coutinho.

I'm not sure what your defensive plan is?  You have a bottom heavy formation, which suggests sitting deep.  Control starts with a high line so dropping deeper makes sense, but why are you then telling them to close down more?  Who do you expect to close down more and why?  If you want your front two to close down tell them using PI's.  If you want your team to press high, i'd look at a formation that puts more players higher up the field so they can do so without leaving massive gaps.  Personally i'd drop Close Down More and Tighter Marking.  Whilst Tighter Marking probably isn't a contributing cause of this goal it is a risky instruction.

If its still an issue after that i'd consider moving the DM to CM, creating a flat 3 in midfield with the two outside CM's being energetic players who can put a foot in and help on the flanks.

I'd then finally look the CB's and see if I can get them to do more, especially if there's 3 vs 1 which means the opposition will outnumber us somewhere else.

[Overmars]

On 9/30/2017 at 14:33, summatsupeer said:

If its still an issue after that i'd consider moving the DM to CM, creating a flat 3 in midfield with the two outside CM's being energetic players who can put a foot in and help on the flanks.

Definitely try this out. If nothing else, it gives your formation a lot of flexibility (adjusting roles/duties) without affecting tactical familiarity in the game. I would also be inclined to use a CM(a) in one of those spots, just to get someone interested in actually pushing forward. If you really want to push the attack, you can go with a CM(a), BBM/RPM/AP, and DLP(d). One of the wingbacks on attack (probably the one on the opposite side of the CM(a)) might also be fun to watch.

And if you really can't get your wingbacks to play enough defense for you then you can always slide them back to the back line. They will still get forward quite often if you give them wingback roles.