Assenuma

A thread by Bert44 prompted me to start this one as I wanted to discuss with other people how they use closing down (CD) in the game.

I have had a lot of misconceptions about how to use it and I want to share my experience and hear your opinion as well.

I used to give high CD to players with great work rate, aggression, tackling etc. (like Gattuso, and Roy Keane) so that they have the freedom to harass the opposition. However, I found that simply drove these players out of position and the opposition used this flaw to then pass in the vacated area and cause chaos in my defense.

Then I started setting my MCs to high CD (the rest to normal) so that they win early balls, make more interceptions and start counter attacks. I thought it made sense as the ball was more often in their area. It was a disaster!

Then in my LL career in FM07 I finally found a way to make CD work. It is not a perfect system but it works really well in LL.

The goal is to win the ball early and frustrate the opponents passing game. The assumption about the CD slider is that it determines how large is the area where a player will chase the opponent with the ball. A bit like a radar…The higher the CD, the larger the area, more often he will go out of position to chase the ball, and more likely he will actually win it early and start your attacks.

How a player defends his zone is determined not only by the CD but a lot of other factors, so I will assume everything else is set to 10 to analyze only the CD effect.

I assume that the defenders' and keeper's closing down are pretty much fixed. DCs should have CD of 5-10, FBs should vary depending on the opposition and the GK should have CD more than 14 to cover long balls in the area. That is why I use them as given and only look at strikers and midfielders.

With medium CD, the players would generally stick to their zone and CD when the ball is there. There will be rarely two players tackling the guy with the ball. When CD is low players will stay in his zone, marking it on their own… When CD of the players is high they will chase the guy with the ball. This will result in players covering much of the adjacent zones and helping out each other.

The idea is to have low CD on players that cover the key zones and high CD on players who mark less critical zones. That is why I decided to assign the following CD instructions:
MR – 16
ML – 16
MC – 14
MC – 14
SC – 17
SC – 17
So, it works a bit like the mentality rule – it works fine if the MCs have slightly lower CD than the wingers, who have slightly lower mentality than the strikers. As I rarely count notches the figures above are tentative, and depend on many factors such as home/away and the quality of the opposition. Higher CD works great at home against a poor opponent. Also do not use high CD when the weather is bad (especially snow) – passing is a problem for the opposition anyway, all you will achieve is to exhaust your players.

I hope to get feedback from people that have done similar experiments.

Hawshiels

I have used high closing down in my Padova game (lower Italian league) and it can be effective there. However, when you are playing in the higher leagues (La Liga), it is too easy for the other team to pass the ball around you and break down your formation.

So, it does work well in my experience - just not in the higher leagues.

Although, in La Liga if I am playing a much weaker team than me (Valencia) and I am at home, I will push the defensive line right up and play much more closing down - otherwise they dominate possession and I can't score.

jaycar

I'm a believer in Rashidi's methods, Low at the back, own half in midfield, maybe high for st.

Current values for my 4-4-1-1 formation are:

CD's = 3-5 (own area)

FB's = 6 (own area)

CM's = 13 (own half)

LM/RM = 13 (own half)

AMC = 13 (own half) (Depending on the players stamina, some AMC's have lousy values for this)

ST = 13 (own half) (this is sometimes higher)

These settings do the trick for me, I find fullbacks getting pulled horribly out of position if they close down higher.

kolobok

I use global closing down as well as global mentality. My general rule is Closing down is 2 notches above mentality. As mentality is always in normal range (7-13 I guess), closing down is also almost always in own half.

The exceptions are:
GK has all individual.

DCs - individual closing down instruction, own area (5);

ST - individual mentality (17 - attatcking), individual closing down (6).

I always use opposition instruction to close down wingers, playmaker (if I can identify one), and slow TM (again, if there is one). Sometimes I close down opposition FBs, but only if I play more attacking.

Works great with strong teams (Udineze, Lyon) and in Championship with Crystal Palace. I played only one Cup game against much stronger team (League Cup Everton, lost 1-2), but it looked fine even there.

Now I am thinking about checking players first touch and composure and closing down everybody with low stats in those attributes.