The obssession with zonal marking

[BlueAnorak]

Zab's honest comments in the press yesterday about the difficulty in changing from zonal to man-for-man marking have got me thinking hard about the issue. We have been a zonal team when defending for 3 and 1/12 seasons now. Contrary to what Garry Neville thinks City were never a 100% zonal marking side under Mancini. Mancini always man marked the renowned 'best headers' of the ball in the league but in general it was zonal.

Personally I think they should have man marked the best two headers of the ball on the opposition team every game to get the best of both systems. But I have to say I have grown to like Zonal set piece defending a lot and I much prefer it to Man-For-Man. For me it's all about the chance of failure - zonal fails on occasion, but when man-for-man fails the outcome is catastrophic as per Zaba on Sunday. (As a side issue WTF was Zaba tasked to target one of their best headers of the ball? He's a good at heading but certainly not the best).

I agree we needed to defend slightly higher up the pitch (though not as high up the pitch as Pellegrini seems to want us too), Our strikers and AMs also needed to press better and we certainly needed to increase the speed of counter attack after winning the ball, but changing everything about the way we defend - WHEN WE WERE THE BEST DEFENCE IN THE LEAGUE FOR THE LAST 3 SEASONS - is just fecking stupid. Admittedly it hasn't helped that our two best defenders were injured during system changeover (possibly the worst possible time for Kompany and Nastastic to be injured) but I have to say I'm not impressed at all with the change and think it will cost City (and Pellegrini) big time over the next month or two.

 

[kaz7]

Given our problem last year was not scoring enough goals and not defending that is where we need to improve.after years of zonal marking i dont see the need to change it completely and we would have won this match against cardiff if we hadnt done it.

 

[Jnr Kisby]

TBH all 3 goals were attributable to Zabaleta, a very poor performance from the man who is usually our most reliable. To blame the system is just wrong, its really not hard to mark a man!

 

[pee dubya]

Given our problem last year was not scoring enough goals and not defending that is where we need to improve.after years of zonal marking i dont see the need to change it completely and we would have won this match against cardiff if we hadnt done it.

Although i really wish we'd stick with zonal, the manager has to implement what he believes in. Can't have a manager not trusting the system he's asking his players to play.

 

[kaz7]

Given our problem last year was not scoring enough goals and not defending that is where we need to improve.after years of zonal marking i dont see the need to change it completely and we would have won this match against cardiff if we hadnt done it.

Although i really wish we'd stick with zonal, the manager has to implement what he believes in. Can't have a manager not trusting the system he's asking his players to play.

If the players are well drilled in a system that has produced the best defence for 3years then why cant he learn to trust that

 

[prestonibbo_mcfc]

Why are we even on about this again ? We have had the meanest defence for last 3 seasons.

Probably because we conceded two terrible goals from corners, having just changed our system for defending corners.

Exactly so we should use zonal.

 

[pee dubya]

Given our problem last year was not scoring enough goals and not defending that is where we need to improve.after years of zonal marking i dont see the need to change it completely and we would have won this match against cardiff if we hadnt done it.

Although i really wish we'd stick with zonal, the manager has to implement what he believes in. Can't have a manager not trusting the system he's asking his players to play.

If the players are well drilled in a system that has produced the best defence for 3years then why cant he learn to trust that

I guess because he's spent 40 years in professional football, after that length of time you're going to be pretty set in certain ways.

 

[Ed1]

Someone could correct me if i am wrong, but zonal marking always give us problem in Europe against talented teams , unfortunately changing the systerm sometimes needs time, I think they will get the hang of it.

 

[Lancet Fluke]

I don't have a problem with man marking or zonal marking as long as the chosen system is implemented properly. The problem with Sunday was that we appeared to be adopting a no marking system. To be fair we did implement that system pretty much perfectly in the second half.

 

[Alex B]

Zonal has been fine with us. Absolutely no need to change it. Really baffled me that.