retired_dolly67601

Hi Guys,

Ok, I have been playing the demo for a bit now and tweaking the defence around by using a whole variation of settings.

When I have been setting up my teams recently, I've actually found it to be more successful having the entire team on closing down rarely, or to be more precise, a value of 6. The defensive line I have also set to deep (6) and I am experiencing some very good defending by the team.

As the line is set to deep, when we lose posession, everybody drops back. Also, as I am closing down rarely, instead of my players rushing out to close down the opposition and creating holes in my formation, they are sitting back and getting behind the ball, keeping their shape. This makes it very difficult for the opposing team to break my defence down as we are not creating any holes by rushing out to them.

When I was playing higher up the pitch with high closing down, we put the opposition under a lot of pressure, but I found we were caught out a lot by a ball over the top, especially when the opposing team had a fast striker.

I just find playing deeper with no closing down to work very well for me.

Has anybody else experimented with this? How have you found it when playing this way?

retired_BrownVanilla

Did this toward the latter of my Dafuge's challenge career on 07, worked very well, however I haven't dared try it with the closing down the way it is on the demo.

Good to see you back around, one of the best posters on this forum

retired_rjw13838

This worked superbly on FM07 as well, but you'll spend ages waiting to finally get the ball. So when you do, you'd better make it count.

retired_curly123

A potential compromise could be to have your defence and midfield on rarely/mixed closing down so they stay tight as a unit but at the same time having wingers and strikers on often closing down so the opposition is getting some pressure applied to them.

Works well for me anyway.

retired_Hurky

yeah, works very well

this my seetings for my DCs

ment. 6 cd 6

and d-line - 6

playing flat 442

retired_kellyk

I managed to create 2 distinct types of tactics for 08. One with low closing downs and another with high closing down as well. However when I play with high closing down, I generally find that you need to go from high upfront to low progressively down.

Another thing about closing down is that it doesn't work universally for all teams in the same way, player attributes such as workrate will define how well a player closes down.

retired_steevo93

The thing I found the hardest to do on FM07 was to defend deep and not close down, then move forward slowly and steadily when you win it back. Deep defending and quick counterattacking seemed very strongly linked, so all but the best teams ended up hoofing it, a tendency you had to play extremely defensively to overcome.

retired_kellyk

One important thing people don't realise is that the closing down slider does not define intensity, it just indicates where closing down will happen.

retired_rjw13838

Nor does it define frequency, as the labels would suggest.

The manual is the only thing that has this right, surprisingly.

retired_jfarleymeade1

Ah yes, the manual. I often feel like I must be the only one who actually reads the manual before I start to play. Doesn't take long and even though there isn't all that much of a difference from year to year, it does clarify a few things or remind of a concept. Worth the 10-20 minutes.