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In the later tactics I have used I have flirted with a new idea of how to interpret how the DL line works. I will excuse myself if this has been covered already in the forum. Also I should inform you that this theory is still in the testing phase.
Setting of the DL
The theory is that setting the DL will make this line work as the line where your TEAM starts to defend, not matter how far up or deep down the pitch the match-play is occuring.
The DL just tells your team where/when on the pitch to start defending when the oppositions enters the area with the ball. As the setting of CD describes the area of the pitch to Close down, the setting for DL marks the area that is the line your team as a whole starts to defend. Deep DL(notch 6) designates your team should move back to own area to start defending from here. Normal DL suggeste that your team should defend above own area within your own half. Push up DL suggests that your team should start to try to win back the ball all over the pitch. How far up is depending on how high you set the DL.
So if I want my team to start to defend as soon as the opposition brings the ball into my own half, I should set the DL to notch 14. This is the last notch of normal. As with CD notch 14 is the last notch for CD own half. The team will position themselves accordingly to the Dl. With individual adjustment depending on individual mentality of your players.
Is a high DL going to push my defenders far up the pitch ?
Not necessarily, this depends on your players individual mentality formation and under which circumstances the opponents regained possession. This setting strongly affects your players position.(In game hint:To deny space behind your defenders, either use a deep DL or defensive mentalities for your defenders.) Both methods acchieve the same thing, but in different ways. You don`t have to do both things. I will come back to this later on in this thread.
When using an above average high DL you must give your defensive players a defensive mentality. This will lead to your team(midfielders/attackers) do the initial defending when the opponents brings the ball to the area you have designated as your teams DL. Your defenders will position themselves according to their individual mentality.
The relation between DL and CD
If you set your DL to 14(own half) and gives none of your players any higher CD than 14, your whole team will only CD within the defending shape of your team designated by the DL. This makes your team compact and you will leave very little space for your opponents to exploit. The drawback is that if you loose possession far up the pitch whilst attcking. None of your players will CD early on, giving the opponents lots of time to prepare a pass wich might pose a danger.
Giving one/some of your players orders to CD higher than own half/the set DL, will be useful under such cirumstances. As when they close down the player with the ball the rest of the team can settle into the teams defending shape. This is one of the few reasons why players should CD outside the teams defending shape.
Example:
In a 4141 formation I want my team to stay put and restrict defending and CD to my own half. I set the DL to 14(last notch of own half).
Mentality is set individually throughout the team. Striker-10, winger-9, midfielders-8, defensive midfielder-7, fullbacks-6, defenders-5, goalkeeper-4.
Closing down is set individually to tailor the DL setting. The striker is allowed to CD outside the teams defending shape. He is given CD-20. Whilst the rest of the team is set to close down within the teams defending shape. Midfielders-14, wingers-13, defensive midfielder-12, fullbacks-11, defenders-10 and goalkeeper-9. This is just an example the settings might need to differ slightly more to get the desireed effect.
This settings will lead to players closing down in the correct order. I will elaborate further later on, I am currently at work. First impressions are looking very good when taking this approach to making tactics.
Just a slight tweak to this cos it makes a lot of sense to me as well.
I tend to play with a defensive line, almost exclusively in the normal range..either mid normal or high normal. Another thing I've noticed is that each player appears to have his own Dline which is why players begin closing down in different areas. For example the fullbacks, they tend to close down a bit higher than the dcs.
Mentality has a slight affect on positioning and this tends to move a team further up the pitch sans DCs, who aren't affected to the DLine as they literally sit right on top of it.
I would generally agree that the best way to use closing down is to understand where mentality and defensive lines occur. If you players have high mentality and you are playing a normal dline, this means they are slightly offset from the original position placing them higher on a pitch. When you set closing down at anywhere higher than their own half they will tend to close down closer to the opposing goal, or further away from your goal. So a really high CD on wingers could see them get pulled apart by a short tempo passing game, or by players seeking to play a through ball.
So a defensive minded game can easily be undone by high closing down in the wings for example.
Whether it works as close to the dline is something that would be interesting to see, assuming a mentality of 10, Dline of 10...these 2 settings imply that a player is tackling or closing down at a "default" position, a higher mentality could imply that his gap between the Dline and his new position is now higher which leads me to believe that it may be even better if a high mentality player should ideally have a lower closing down, thus encouraging him to drop deeper before he closes down. Hope this makes sense.
I'm playing a really high dl (19) at the moment, with cd set to the last notch of own half, playing as spurs. conceded 7 from 12 games in the league.
Occasionally drop the dl and mentality back a bit and make up for it by increasing the cd.
Is that the correct logical step?
Try it to see how it works. I might suspect that your formation/shape will be stretched.
I found out that it is ok to CD higher than the DL, if you want to dominate the game. But only to a certain degree. With a DL of 14 I actually have the whole team CD high. With 20 for the striker and descending throughout the team.
When I reduce the DL and mentality I also reduce the CD proportonaly. Thus if you instead increase the CD your teams shape will maybe be stretched to much.
Also when playing a defensive counter attacking game, all players individual mentality are set to 10 and descending through the team, down to 4 for the GK. Team mentality are set to 14/15(attacking). This has a major impact on passing, most passes will be ought to be attacking minded(going forward).
I haven`t solved this puzzle yet, I stopped experimenting when I found two tactics that really worked well for me. The only thing differs from what I have written in this thread, is the CD. I have much more CD than I suggested at first. But that might be because I am playing with Liverpool. With a poorer team such a high CD might be fatal.
I use a very similar approach, but with a few differences: first, I set my individual mentalities, then I set the defensive line. Once this is done, I adjust the closing down matching it to the defensive line for whole team (including defenders and keeper), but with the striker(s) and one midfielder slighty higher than the rest, to break up play. This is the most compact strategy to play (for me). The higher the quality of my team, the higher the DL and closing down (but never above 14 or 15).
What I don't understand here is that the starting number is 0 - so is there 20 nothces to the left???
I would be interested in what the team's CD should be set to based on this - are the individual settings something that take over the teams CD setting?
Also, a question about the Individual Mentalities that you have put on your original post...
"Mentality is set individually throughout the team. Striker-10, winger-9, midfielders-8, defensive midfielder-7, fullbacks-6, defenders-5, goalkeeper-4."
If the starting notch is 10 - are you saying that the stikers mentality should be defensive??
I apologise if your shaking your head at this, but I'm trying to understand this to build a solid tactic that works - and work from there.
First of all, there might be other people that will disagree with what I am claiming, but it works for me. Also bear in mind that I play with Liverpool, I have good players. I will try to answer your questions as well as I can.
I set my team mentality first, because this tells the players how to act on the pitch. Especially when passing the ball. If you want to play counter attacking football you should set their mentality to an attacking one. This will make them pass the ball more forwards.
As I currently see it your DL will tell your players where on the pitch to start defending. Your players will react to the oppositon dependant on this. If you want to start closing them down when they enter your half should set it to about 14. The deeper you set it the more pressure you will soak up.
This needs to balanced. The advantage by soaking up pressure is that your opponents will be likely to move their team up the pitch. This will give your players more space to benefit from when regaining the ball and launches the counter attack.
Thedisadvantage is that the deeper you sit back, the closer they will be to your goal. And thus might be able to create danger. I would say that it depends on your team. Currently with Liverpool with the counter attacking version of the tactic I have set the DL to 10. This gives a good balance for my team when considering defensive safeness and creating a little more space behind their defenders.
The DL slider goes from 1-20. With 1 being far left and sit really deep, whilst 20 is far right and push up all the way.
Closing down is dependant on your team. I am currently using a slightly higher CD for my players when playing counterattacking. I think the MC`s start at 15. This again is dependant on your teams ability, and how high you set your DL.
The CD slider is the same as with DL. It has 20 notches from left to right. Most people counts the notch at the far left as 1.
I set the teams CD to the highest individual CD in my team. I am not certain that this will have any effect. But if it have I will tell my team to start to close down at that part of the pitch.
The strikers notch is set to 10, this again is in the middle of the slider ranging from 1 to 20. This means he is on mixed mentality, doing both defending and attacking. When playing Counter attacking you could think about raising the individual mentality for some of your players.
Most sliders with more than three notches has this numerical range of 1-20. Except the team mentality. For this you have two more notches. One in each end of the slider.
Tnanks for your reply - certainly see how it begins to fit together.
I'd like to set about making a solid base for a counter attacking team - do you have a personal e-mail address I can contact you on?
Obviously you don't want to be hounded - but I simply want to try your ideas in a game of mine, and help give new ideas on your platform.
My e-mail address is mdodgson@googlemail.com - I'd be happy to hear from you and go from there?
My ideas is to create 3 or 4 standard tactics that are the same formation - but ones for different situations.... away at stronger team, away at weaker team, home winning etc - so that they are easily changeable.
A new approach for how the DL line works 
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