Man Marking and Showing Players Onto Their Weaker Foot
By: Daryl | January 22nd, 2009
Managing: Newcastle
Date: Feb 25th, 2010
Progress: 8th in Prem after 26 games
Addictedness rating: “Real football managers don’t need food.”
Apologies for the lack of updates over the last two days. We have some catching up to do.
[in TV voice-over voice] “Previously on FM Offside…”
My attacking 4-3-3 (or 4-1-2-2-1 if you prefer) was working and I’m nestled in around 6th/7th place. Which is about where I want to be. Champions League qualification is off the table (usual suspects this season), but I’d just beat Athletic Bilbao 1-0 in the Europa League last 32 first leg.
“And now… the thrilling conclusion…”
Well maybe not that thrilling. Next game was away to Wigan.
vs Wigan (away) L 2-1
You know how I was all excited recently because my players were following instructions and getting things done? Well, this is the opposite. Thanks to an excellent Clément Chantôme goal (’bout time monsieur) we were 1-0 up going into the last 10 minutes. And we lost 2-1.
Looking at Wigan’s 4-4-1-1, the clear dangers were Kapo (sitting in the hole) and Antonio Valencia (on the right wing). So, on the sound advice of Chris Hughton I made plans to contains those two.
My d-mid Belletti was instructed to man-mark Olivier Kapo, mark him tightly, and also to tackle him “hard”. Shouldn’t be too hard for a World Cup winner, eh? I also told all the boys to show Kapo onto his right foot, since he doesn’t have one. Similarly, left back Jose Enrique (and later N’Zogbia, after Enrique got injured) were instructed to stick to Valencia like glue.
That was the plan. Here’s what actually happened:
So I’m starting to question the value of defensive instructions. You can see that Belletti gets tight on Kapo to begin with, but when the ball goes wide he leaves his man to chase the winger, and so the winger squares for an unmarked Kapo to score. With his right foot.
And… not sure if I’m over-analyzing this, but… were my defenders dumb enough to show Kapo onto his right foot even though that gave him basically a tap-in? Clearly in this situation it would have been better to show Kapo onto his left, so I’m wondering how literally my instructions are taken and whether it’s better to let players make their own decisions.
and then a few minutes later…
Clearly no one was interested in man-marking Kapo (who ran through for the initial shot) or Valencia (who scored the rebound) there.
So here’s are my questions:
Do you man-mark opposition dangermen? And is that successful for you?
Do you show players onto their weaker foot? Is that successful?
Oh, and the Europa League:
(Europa League) vs Athletic Bilbao (away) last 32, second leg L 2-1 (2-2 on agg.)
We were below average and lost 2-1, but that was still enough to put us through. The Pog got the all-important away goal with his head, which just about makes up for his penalty miss in the first leg.
And who have we drawn next? Liverpool. Again. After the two legs we’ll have played the Reds six times this season.
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Comments
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I only ask them to tightly mark anyone who is capable of heading the ball into the goal.So whenever the opposing team has someone who is tall and a good heading rating, I’ll tell the defense to mark them tightly.
If it is someone that is better at shooting the ball and poses no real danger with their heading, I’ll set it to show onto their weaker foot and hard tackling.
This generally works for me. I’ll get a striker who sucks at finishing with their noggin and my defenders will occasionally let them win a cross from a corner or free kick and the striker heads it wide or way over the bar.
My biggest problem is with the set pieces. I’ve been leaking goals lately and it has been months since my team has gotten a clean sheet. What happens is that even though my defenders are set to tightly mark the strikers, they sometimes let them go free and they get a chance to score a goal off a header. The strikers will miss most of them but once or twice in a match, they will score. And that pisses me off. Or what will happen is that a midfielder or even a defender will sneak into the box unmarked because my defenders are focused on the strikers so we concede yet another goal.
However, I don’t concede goals like those. On the midfielders I will only set close down to “always” and sometimes “show on to [weaker foot]” if the midfielder can shoot from a distance. When I forget to do that (it happens) I concede those amazing long distance goals from 25+ yards.
Posted from
United States
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I usually get them to close down what I see as the main threats and go in hard on them, this usually works for me as long as I dont make them close down too many players, when I told them to close down 4 players they left their position and lost the shape, ended up losing quite badly (3-0 to Liverpool or Man Utd, cant remember which one).
So now I just tend to show the centre forwards onto their weaker foot, close down the keeper and maybe close down their best centre midfielder – seems to work for me
Posted from
United Kingdom -
Maybe the problem is that the team instruction for “closing down” is set to quite high. So, as you suggest James, this leads to players leaving their positions too often.
Posted from
United States -
the “closing down” option in the team instructions might also play a role in that belletti running here and there scenario.. if you want to defend deep, (like during the end of the game) you can set it to own area .. defenders stop running into opponent midfielders in that case
Posted from
United States -
oops!! missed your post Daryl
Posted from
United States -
Been offered £17 million for N’Zogbia, think I should accept? Would if I had a replacement for him – but not sure who I could replace him with!
Posted from
United Kingdom -
Is N’Zogbia any good for you? I thought he’d be excellent, but he’s way down the pecking order in my team.
Obviously it’s a completely different situation in two different games, but if someone offered me 17m for my N’Zogbia I’d bite their arm off.
Posted from
United States -
I rarely man mark, unless it’s Ronaldo or Gerrard I pretty much let my players so their thing. I ususally use tight marking, weaker food and always closing down. But it depends on a player to player game to game basis. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
How close is your table? I hope you can snatch 6th place!Posted from
United States -
Ive always found it useful to close down and tightly mark strikers and creative players, and show on to weaker foot. The deep lying central midfielders I usually leave alone, but I would say that I instruct my team to go in hard on every striker and midfielder, and by the end of the game end up showing on to weaker foot and closing down just about every player.
What I also found useful is to change your center backs marking status to man from zonal. They dont mark a specific player, but they pay attention to the strikers more. I also have a defensive midfielder that closes down in his own area, but he tells my assistant he is used to closing down higher up the pitch. Dont waiver, if he wins the ball before the oppositions gets to your defensive line, he is fine.
Posted from
United States -
Well, I play him centre midfield with Guthrie and Van Der Vaart and Oba Martins attacking left midfield, and he seems to do well, I didnt think he was good enough for £17million though. Just a matter of trying to get someone to replace him – plus its Arsenal so I can see him screwing me over when I play them.
Any recommendations as to who I should sign instead? =/
Posted from
United Kingdom -
Man marking’s a fickle thing; I typically do it to strikers, AMC’s, and wingers (along with showing them onto weaker foot) from good sides and sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. I’m becoming increasingly convinced in quest for total football that assigning specific roles and differing levels of creativity may not be the way to go–it’s resulted in some sexy, possession based attacking football, with the occasional hideous giveaway by Hamed Diomande or Neven Subotic (my CB’s) resulting in Francisco Ochoa making yet another brilliant save (all recommended btw–in the immortal words of Jamie Redknapp, they’re all ‘top, top players.’)
Again, marking is really dependent on who’s doing the marking–if it’s Mascherano or Cannavaro, then you’re golden, but if you’re asking Ryan Taylor to mark Gerrard and Torres, not so good–stay in your zone and hope that they can’t break you down.
Posted from
United States -
I only Close down DMC’s or MC’s.
Closing down AMC is very risky.
For man marking a dangerman , u need to have an equally strong and fast defender for it to actually work. I tried man marking Ronaldo with Juan and he made juan his bitch and then i actually tried marking the fag again with mexes and boy oh boy , he made ronaldo his mistress all 65 mins until fergie subbed him.
On weaker foot , oh well my theory on that is it ONLY works if the opposition player actually depends on ONLY one of his foot. example beckham , ask him to do anything with left and he is totally off. But if a player is decent with both legs then its a 50-50 chance u taking. plus it also depends on ur player if he is good with both his feet to make those instructions actually work.Its those lil tit bits that make so much of a difference in a game and thats what makes FM an amazing game. One silly mistake and u pay for it big.
Posted from
United States
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