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I have been watching these posts quite a lot over the last month or so and I notice a few people favour their centre backs closing rarely. I want people to tell me what they think this one.
Basically, I agree with the theory that DC's close down rarely to keep position and wait for play to come to them (stopping through balls n all), however in practice i have found this not to work well dor me. I find that the boys just stand there and dont put up with much of a challenge. I normaly have closing down for them on 5 n wing backs at 15, mixed on team instructions and everything else just kept normal as is.
My defence just leak goals n if i managed to stop that i would whave much more succes as i normally can score a few.
Maybe it would be good if i had the mids and forwards working more closely, hopefully preventing the ball from being anywhere near my defenders...
My philosphy is your defence will be more solid by staying in position. My DC's mark opposition strikers, and i let the pace of my wing backs do their stuff, and play a MC on a defensive mentality.
a partnership of 2 dc works well for me. one closes the hell down, he also sometimes manmarks and hard tackles. but the other, which is mainly for clearing any high and through balls, just sits back and wait. more like a sweeper role in dc. i left offside unticked, never seem to get that work.
Depends what you are up against! 4-3-3 with wingers I put one DC on man mark and low closing down and the other quite high 11-15 with the full backs on man mark.
Against two strikers both DCs on man mark low closing down and full backs on high closing.
Lastly just one striker I do the same as 4-3-3 but the full backs onb high closing. I usually play with a DMC and he is on high closing down too. I think at least one midfield should do this.
I believe in playing positionally with the DCs. Line is normal, with barrows on DCs, pressing rarely, closing down 6 (depending on aggresiveness of player), tackling normal. This requires a DMC with a defensive mentality, high pressing, closing down and tackling. I am a firm believer that FM (and previous CMs) favor tacitcs with a DMC.
FBs are more aggresive.
I also play a narrow midfield with width comming from darrows and attacking fullbacks (another FM engine favorite).
When I've tried a flat 442 the back line needs to be high, with a higher closing down from the DCs to close the gap between midfield and defence. I find this works well at lower levels, but at the highest level playing positon and using a DMC is vastly superior for me. I'm sure there are other ways to be dominant defensively, I just haven't figured them out.
Rarely closing down with Centre backs 
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