Zonal Vs Man-to-man Marking

[Wouterus]

Per on the issue:

"When you play zonal, you need to attack the ball and try to get the best players out and mark tightly when they are in front of you," Mertesacker told Arsenal Player. "We lacked a bit of that intensity but we suffered a bit, especially in the last 10 minutes after Mathieu Debuchy got injured."

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20140915/mertesacker-the-key-to-zonal-marking" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... al-marking</a>

 

[goonerwarsh]

Per on the issue:

"When you play zonal, you need to attack the ball and try to get the best players out and mark tightly when they are in front of you," Mertesacker told Arsenal Player. "We lacked a bit of that intensity but we suffered a bit, especially in the last 10 minutes after Mathieu Debuchy got injured."

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20140915/mertesacker-the-key-to-zonal-marking" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archiv ... al-marking</a>" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He's bang on. Having got ourselves in that position, defending a lead, to give a goal away so cheaply and let a man have a completely free header is unforgivable. Per is right, we completely lacked the intensity and desire to protect that lead. It would have been such an important three points too.

 

[Caz19]

I wouldn't be as unhappy about us conceding goals from set pieces if we actually scored from them at half of the rate at which we concede from them.

At the moment we're conceding from them nearly every game and scoring from them...almost never. We scored a few at the end of last season (Koscielny vs Hull and Koscielny vs Newcastle) but overall we're pretty pathetic and we often get 15-20 corners in a game and hardly create a decent chance from any of them.

 

[The_Roadrunner]

This is a known issue so I am just going to post this pic I took of my TV paused right before the corner was taken by Coutinho that gave Liverpool a draw.

Many articles have been written about how atrocious our set piece defending has been for years. We use zonal marking exclusively. Some say we shouldn't just use zonal and some think we just aren't implementing it correctly.

Either might be true but clearly as this pic shows we are not defending set pieces properly. Both Monreal and Chambers see Skrtel before the corner is taken but neither moves out to mark him and fight him for position. This shows the flaw in our current system/training/both.

Why is not Chambers or Monreal moving out to fight Skrtel for position. That should be happening. I am not sure man marking alone would fix this because this picture could be taken from a man marking scheme too. If Monreal and Chambers both don't know what the feck they are supposed to be doing with Skrtel barely inside the box, then they need some fecking coaching from someone who does:

Here is picture showing what I mean with Skrtel with loads of space and Monreal pointing right after Chambers pointed. Per is in the middle and clearly looking at another man while corner was being set up. Monreal and Chambers need to be on Skrtel clearly. Woj could also arguably be in a better position at the far post rather than waffling in the middle.

 

[dysphoria]

Does it really matter? Bar last season for a while, we've been absolutely dire in both attacking and defending during corners and even if you switch from man marking to zonal, unless your players have consistently practised defending/attacking them, the application is not going to be there. I mean for ****'s sake, our biggest threat in the air is also the same(and probably only player) we continously rely on to defend our corners(giroud) and judging from what we've seen from our shower of ****, man marking would probably be even worse for us because it relies on individuals to constantly be switched on and to always track their markers instead of the usual pointing at the opposition and doing **** all.

 

[The_Roadrunner]

Does it really matter? Bar last season for a while, we've been absolutely dire in both attacking and defending during corners and even if you switch from man marking to zonal, unless your players have consistently practised defending/attacking them, the application is not going to be there. I mean for ****'s sake, our biggest threat in the air is also the same(and probably only player) we continously rely on to defend our corners(giroud) and judging from what we've seen from our shower of ****, man marking would probably be even worse for us because it relies on individuals to constantly be switched on and to always track their markers instead of the usual pointing at the opposition and doing **** all.

What matters is we are dire and that has to change somehow

 

[dysphoria]

Does it really matter? Bar last season for a while, we've been absolutely dire in both attacking and defending during corners and even if you switch from man marking to zonal, unless your players have consistently practised defending/attacking them, the application is not going to be there. I mean for ****'s sake, our biggest threat in the air is also the same(and probably only player) we continously rely on to defend our corners(giroud) and judging from what we've seen from our shower of ****, man marking would probably be even worse for us because it relies on individuals to constantly be switched on and to always track their markers instead of the usual pointing at the opposition and doing **** all.

What matters is we are dire and that has to change somehow

That change isn't going to be brought by a change in our system of marking or formation, realistically, we've only got 3-4 players who are competent in the air and unless we make a top to down change first from how much importance we put to set pieces, we're still gonna be utter crap at them.

 

[bojed]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems we have ditched the "one man at each post" strategy since the second half of last season when defending against corner. We have one player guarding the near post and the GK guarding his area and the far post. Is this meant for goalkeeping efficiency or something else?

 

[The_Roadrunner]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems we have ditched the "one man at each post" strategy since the second half of last season when defending against corner. We have one player guarding the near post and the GK guarding his area and the far post. Is this meant for goalkeeping efficiency or something else?

Look at my pic.

Certainly don't have anyone at the far post by what my granddad would've called marking the far post. Woj is in the middle seeming kind of confused and Monreal and Chambers are bunched together not marking anyone but seeming to be both occupying a "zone" that neither really knows what to do meanwhile Skrtel is waiting deeper making a typical anti-Arsenal late corner run into the box from deep and heading in a goal because we have no one moving out to mark him.

 

[say yes]

Zonal marking is absolutely fine, there's a reason why so many top coaches employ it.

 

[BobP]

Exactly, execution is the issue here.

 

[GunnerBP]

The problem with both tactics is execution.

If a player loses who they are marking and he has a wide open header then man marking is bad.

If a player decides to man mark or does not adequately patrol his zone then zonal marking is bad.

Against Liverpool we had two and maybe three players neglect their zone and that was the problem.

Monreal decided to man mark Sakho and that left a bunch of space for Skrtel to run into. Some people have said that Chambers was told to occupy the space that Monreal vacated and he didn't shift over. This is why he was late to defend Skrtel.

Also, Gibbs left the near post and moved 5 yards forward into no man's land.

If any of these three guys had stuck to their main job then this conversation would be moot.

All season our defense has been poor with its execution, and it is baffling and alarming considering how good our defense was last season.

Yes, we have had a lot of injuries defensively, but we keep on making basic mistakes that are costing us points. Knowing your role on set pieces should be something that all of our defenders should know.

 

[MutableEarth]

The problem with both tactics is execution.

If a player loses who they are marking and he has a wide open header then man marking is bad.

If a player decides to man mark or does not adequately patrol his zone then zonal marking is bad.

Against Liverpool we had two and maybe three players neglect their zone and that was the problem.

Monreal decided to man mark Sakho and that left a bunch of space for Skrtel to run into. Some people have said that Chambers was told to occupy the space that Monreal vacated and he didn't shift over. This is why he was late to defend Skrtel.

Also, Gibbs left the near post and moved 5 yards forward into no man's land.

If any of these three guys had stuck to their main job then this conversation would be moot.

All season our defense has been poor with its execution, and it is baffling and alarming considering how good our defense was last season.

Yes, we have had a lot of injuries defensively, but we keep on making basic mistakes that are costing us points. Knowing your role on set pieces should be something that all of our defenders should know.

Execution only improves with confidence and practice. Which means drilling scenarios in training. Do we work on that? If we do, why do the players suffer crisis in concentration during match day? I know it sounds cliché, but one of the reasons we must be failing at this is because we don't have an organizing presence in the team. If we had our first team 11, you'd say that the players with the biggest flaws would be Arteta and Mertesacker - two very intelligent players but both with significant lack in pace, and in the latter's case, he's not fantastic in the air despite being a f*cking giant.

Yet, those two are captain and vice-captain. And as Per is standing in as captain, yet he is not doing the best job of being Arsène's eyes and ears on the actual pitch, then it surely must negate any work that's being done on the training pitch.

OR, it's the case - that some people, including myself at one point in the recent past, also believe - that we actually don't work on these things in training and only do technical drills .

 

[Rain Dance]

OR, it's the case - that some people, including myself at one point in the recent past, also believe - that we actually don't work on these things in training and only do technical drills

well, that would be the easiest answer to explain how vulnerable we are from set-piece ever since Adams and co retired

 

[redanddread]

If we didn't act like such pussies for the last 15 mins of that match and somebody on our team could have put his expensive boot on the ball and kept possession for more than 2 - 3 passes we might not have had to deal with the gazillion corners that we faced at the end of the game and this discussion would have been moot.

That we couldn't keep possession for any significant period of time once Liverpool went down to 10 men was appalling. Eventually we were going to give away a good chance from a set piece.

I have no issues with Zonal marking, however, it's the execution of it that is important. Furthermore, some have wondered whether, with time ticking down and an extra man up, we might not have had some combination of man2man & zonal for that last corner.

Anyway, Zonal or not, it's going to amount to nowt as long as the team remain as defensively resilient as a wet paper bag. We're weak under pressure and we were unable to stop the pressure from building and thus paid the price.

As the mighty Arseblog says-"we're ridiculous".