Defending.

[entiscool]

I've noticed a couple of things on the defensive side of things which are really hampering my team. Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas on how to solve them.

no.1 - Centre-backs are turned far too easily by the opposition strikers. It really is laughable at times. I have tried marking, tight marking, players with high agility and positioning, playing opposition with low agility, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. At the top level of football, how often do you see a striker recieve a ball into feet, slowly turn 180 degrees on roughly the same circumference as the sun and leave the centre back looking like a lost zombie? It is hideous to watch and frustratingly there seems to be nothing I can do about it.

no.2 - My full backs lose concentration too much. It is just too many times I see them stand idly by and drift away as the oppositions wingers make runs past him. Similarly, I have tried many things to rectify this, tight marking, defensive/normal/attacking mentalities, full backs with high concentration, but still to no avail. What is a poor boy to do?!

If anyone wants to know the calibre or players I am managing, I will state that I am currently the boss of Manchester United who, at the time this game was released, had just come off the back of defending their way to a Premiership title with one of the best defensive records the football league has ever seen, so there can be no question that the defenders I am using aren't up to scratch. Also, I used the same tactics and indeed, even the same team on Football Manager 2009 and never noticed either of these two problems to any severe degree.

Does anybody else suffer from either of these two plagues? I had read before recently purchasing this game that it was a little too heavy on goals, which would suggest that some people had problems with the defending as well.

What can I do? I'm shipping goals for fun yet there seems to be nothing I can help with. My arm chair has taken an absolute battering. Help!

[athos]

I have the same problem, but only against the fastest forwards like Agbonlahor and Adebayor. What I did is play aggressive tackling, deeper defensive line, slower pace, and narrower formation. I'm not sure what you mean by "opposition with low agility", but it's the acceleration and pace that count in this situation.

[BigCisHere]

If your defenders are being skinned, then you need to make sure of a couple of things.

1. Make sure you are playing a deep defensive line, if you are too high, there is too much space to run in to.

2. Make sure you tell your defenders to stand off. If you get them to mark tightly, or close down, then they will get too close to the forward.

3. Make sure their mentality and creative freedom are low. This means overriding team mentality and setting them to defensive, and setting their creative freedom to low. This way they won't be tempted to override tactical instructions, and will also play deeper.

4. If you are trying to play with Fluid or Very Fluid, then try switching to Rigid or perhaps Balanced and see if it helps. Against top teams with Man City I change from Balanced for normal teams to Rigid. This makes you tougher to break down. I got a 0-0 against Spurs and a deserved 1-0 win against Arsenal by doing this.

5. Make sure their role is not set as Stopper. They will break from the line to close players down if they do. Just leave them as normal and see if that helps, or try even setting the quicker one to Cover.

Nothing else I can think of right now

If you have done all these things and are still shipping goals...well...the only other things I can think of are...How new are you at the club? Do you constantly change the players and tactics in defence? Are the players new to the club or have they been there a while?

Players need time to settle and adjust to tactics. A new tactic might work in the first game or two, but players need a few games to adjust and get used to them. If you constantly change them, then the players can't adapt. Same thing if you change the players. A regular line-up is better than a Rafa approach of rotation.

[kevin3]

No. 1 that you mentioned is very annoying!! Usually they get a few yards of space in front of your centre back and are able to turn and do whatever they like. The defenders just don't seem to react. Even when they beat them the rest of your defense just collapses and offer no cover or help.

These are a few ways I used of limiting this that you could try out.

I was playing Man City ( was Man Utd) and I knew Tevez liked to drop off and get the ball deep while I knew Adebayor was quick in behind, so I deployed Carrick as a DM to plug the hole and stop the ball reaching Tevez and also had closing down always so he had no space. I also defended deep because of the threat of Adebayor and had tight marking never and I managed to keep them out of the game. However when I changed to a 4-4-2 and pushed the defensive line up to try and win the game, Tevez managed to find space, turn and pick a through ball in behind my defense to Adebayor and they won 2-1 from a goal that I tried to prevent at the start of the game and would'nt have had I not changed my tactics.

It depends on the players you come across. If you are playing agaisnt Agbonglahor then you know he has great pace but hasn't much else to offer, so I play a fairly deepish backline but have his oppostion intructions on never to tight mark and never to close down because I don't think he can hurt me from long shots. I managed to dominate and win 1-0.

[Troneas]

I've noticed a couple of things on the defensive side of things which are really hampering my team. Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas on how to solve them.

no.1 - Centre-backs are turned far too easily by the opposition strikers. It really is laughable at times. I have tried marking, tight marking, players with high agility and positioning, playing opposition with low agility, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. At the top level of football, how often do you see a striker recieve a ball into feet, slowly turn 180 degrees on roughly the same circumference as the sun and leave the centre back looking like a lost zombie? It is hideous to watch and frustratingly there seems to be nothing I can do about it.

i will assume the strikers who do this are good dribblers (otherwise they won't attempt it) in which case you are playing against good teams when this happens.

If you play with a tighter formation they will have more difficulties dribbling your defenders.

try using a stopper or two to anticipate the striker.

look for defenders with high anticipation - regardless if you use them as stoppers or not.

consider an anchorman to supplement your defense.

increase your pressing (you want to anticipate the striker) - if however your problem is that your defense is getting disorganized you need to decrease this (but it doesn't sound like your problem)

try not to hammer them too much by getting angry since their confidence will drop; and praise them whenever you can.

finally get new defenders (regardless of how good you might think yours is) - in my experience sometimes the two CB's don't gel. i had otamendi playing wonderfully alongside pepe for instance (and it also appeared in his general observations field: "feels he plays well with pepe"; and then i signed sakho for millions and my defense was a mess (for several seasons) and i tried everything. I changed his partner it got better then i finally had to completely renew the defense.

no.2 - My full backs lose concentration too much. It is just too many times I see them stand idly by and drift away as the oppositions wingers make runs past him. Similarly, I have tried many things to rectify this, tight marking, defensive/normal/attacking mentalities, full backs with high concentration, but still to no avail. What is a poor boy to do?!

If anyone wants to know the calibre or players I am managing, I will state that I am currently the boss of Manchester United who, at the time this game was released, had just come off the back of defending their way to a Premiership title with one of the best defensive records the football league has ever seen, so there can be no question that the defenders I am using aren't up to scratch. Also, I used the same tactics and indeed, even the same team on Football Manager 2009 and never noticed either of these two problems to any severe degree.

Does anybody else suffer from either of these two plagues? I had read before recently purchasing this game that it was a little too heavy on goals, which would suggest that some people had problems with the defending as well.

What can I do? I'm shipping goals for fun yet there seems to be nothing I can help with. My arm chair has taken an absolute battering. Help!

do you have your fullbacks set to "automatic"?

automatic just didn't work for me, and i had the best results using "support" and training them to go forward whenever possible. you still need them to have a decent amount of tackling and positioning in this position; and if you expect them to go forward good pace is a must.

[Stemlfc65]

Try playing narrower.

This will squeeze the opponents players and may stop players being given the ball too often to their feet with space.

It also helps if you play short passing because there will be more options for your players with narrow tactics.

It'll be a mixture of things but try to stop players receiving the ball at the feet by hassling the opponent in midfield and make sure your defenders stand off fast players to stop them skinning you. Closing down could also be a problem. Close down close to the area so they stay in position until the last second.

Keep trying things and you'll get it right.