retired_afaist

First of all, I apologize if this topic has been covered before. I have tried searching, but whenever I find a topic that looks interesting, it turns out it's for a previous version. Ah well - here goes:

First of all, I'm trying to develop a setup looking like this: http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/9420/obtacpj9.jpg

My main problem seems to be the 3-man defense. More often than not the oppositions' forwards either:
1. aren't marked, so they receive simple passes and are clear on goal.
2. or have no problems skinning my defenders and getting clear on goal.

I have tried a high defensive line with high closing down, a low defensive line with low closing down, a mix of those two and I've tried tight marking, man marking - I've even tried giving the center defender a free role, in the hope that he'd be able to back up his defensive colleagues, but to no avail.

What I'm searching for is a way to create a fairly capable 3-man defense. Preferably with a bit of explaining following the suggestions (if any), so I may be able to pin point what it is I'm doing wrong.

Tia,

- Troels

retired_infinite_dreams

What you can try to do (if you havent done already) is the following:

When i use a 3 man defence i like to have 2 of my defenders as man marking defenders for the opposition's two forwards, and one defender to act as a sweeper to be the last point of defence.

What you can try is to put the defender to the left and right on tight man marking and the defender in the middle on zonal marking.

The two man marking defenders i usually put on a little bit higher mentality then the sweeper defender, say 5 for the man marking defenders and 3 for the sweeper one. I also give the man marking defenders a little bit higher closing down then the sweeper one so that they close down first and the sweeper one stays in his position to act as a cover.

What i also does from time to time is to give the middle defender (sweeper) a back arrow to the sweeper position so that he plays deeper then the other two. But if you play this way dont use the offside trap, atleast i havent got any good results from using it when playing this way.

The defensive line i set according to the opposition and what the scout repport says, if they use fast strikers i play deeper else i push up a bit more.

Hope that this helped you some way, if you have more questions just ask them.

retired_afaist

Thanks, Zenith - I'll give it a try

retired_afaist

Oh btw - when you say closing down, how much do you mean? Is it, say, 7 for the "side defenders" and 5 for the middle defender, or higher/lower?

- Troels

retired_infinite_dreams

Yeah exactly. Something like that, i used to set it as the same as the mentality. That is 3 for the sweeper one and 5 for the side defenders. But i guess putting them to 5 and 7 wont make such a big difference.

retired_afaist

Hmm...that seemed to help a bit - at least my defenders haven't messed up as much as usually after changing the mentality, closing down and putting the back arrow on the CD. Ran into another problem - my forwards decided they didn't like scoring anymore, but dropping their mentality a bit seemed to have an impact as well as telling them not to close down anymore. I'm actually somewhat pleased with this tactic now, although I need to try it out with some better/worse teams before I know whether it's useful or not. Although my players aren't exactly worldclass (yet), they do have a fairly high rating and may be a bit too good for the Danish SAS liga. That said, I'm quite sure that my tactic can improve quite a bit still.