Zonal Marking

Zonal is no different to man marking, the idea of both is to attack the ball, for those who do that, it should bring you the reward of reaching the ball, providing you catch the flight of it.

Look at Skrtel on Sat, when they scored he stood and watched while the City man pulled a step back and had a free header. If your playing well you stop things like their goal from happening, if you playing Zonal or man marking.  

Skrtel is low on confidence and his guard dropped, he'll come good again, he is going through a bad patch, which happens to all players.

Their is not much difference between the two systems that I can see. and I suppose you have to work in, or study football to know the difference. I don't, nor do I pretend to know, but whatever it is it served us well for 4 years and now we aren't doing to well, it's all the fault of the zonal marking. Rubbish.

I think Reina also needs to take some blame here. It wouldn't harm him to come for a few more crosses and command his box like a Clemence or Schmichel did. I know a few times yesterday he did come for the ball from free kicks, but it is the only weak area of his game.

If he came and claimed the ball from corners on a more regular basis, it'd install confidence in the back four.

Adebayor was what, 9 or 10 yards from goal when he headed it in and quite central. That kind of ball could easily be claimed by the keeper and in today's game where you can't fart by a keeper let alone challenge one, if there is any contact it's almost certainly a free kick.

^ In that instance for the goal though Skrtel was in his way.  Skrtel should have been further forward and been planting his head on to that ball.

Skrtel wasn't low on confidence he had just scored :S

Skrtel wasn't low on confidence he had just scored :S

Agree it was Skrtel's mistake but the whold defensive set up needs to be sorted and if Pelligrino can't see that he's not worth his salary.

Skrtel wasn't low on confidence he had just scored :S

Just because he had just scored does not mean his confidence in defense isn't still below what it should be.

I think we're terrible at set pieces all round. How often do we score from set pieces and look how much we concede from them. Rafa deffo needs to sort this out on the training ground. Why the f**k would you do zonal marking against teams like city? so simple just use our centre halves to mark Adebayor and Lescott and other players to mark other potential threats

I think we're easy prey to the rest of PL on this - pick on defensive frailties and Mark Hughes said that after the match on Sat.  If we get it why hasn't it improved via training pitch.  Don't see Chelsea looking vulnerable @ all 

I have got a great idea!

When the opposition have a free kick or a corner why don't we adopt a new approach.

Make sure its a Liverpool player who gets his head on the bloody ball instead of an opposition player.

I have got a great idea!

When the opposition have a free kick or a corner why don't we adopt a new approach.

Make sure its a Liverpool player who gets his head on the bloody ball instead of an opposition player.

Im pretty sure that is the plan. It's the execution that is letting us down.

Just bin it!.....Go for man to man that way they all know.

Just bin it!.....Go for man to man that way they all know.

No system is ever perfect though. I can see us screwing that up at the moment too, as players just are not communicating. Confusion and misplace defending can mar man-to-man just as much as zonal.

Fact is if there was a way that never failed everyone would be doing it. We have made this a strong point of our team in the past, so we know it works. It's just getting the fundamentals right and making it work, that's all we are missing. Get a steady, stable defense that isn't being constantly rocked by injury and string some games together, and we'll see it improve.

The thing is IMO big, our players seem to be following the flight of the ball and not the run of the incoming player.

It's not the system that is the problem, it's the down to the players. The idea of marking zonally is that nobody can get dragged out of position by following a 'decoy' run so wherever the ball drops, there should be a Liverpool player in that area to attack it. That is the problem, Skrtel may have started in the right position, regardless of what Adebeyor was up to but never attacked the ball. He waited for it to drop before heading towards it and that was too late.
People throw up statistics about how many goals we concede from free kicks and corners but over the last few seasons, we've had an excellent defensive record overall and have been using zonal marking all that time. If we switched to man marking, maybe we'd concede less from set pieces but more from other areas, like most other teams do. The zonal marking is just another one of those things that gets thrown at Rafa when things are going wrong. It worked at Valencia and it works here, things are going wrong all over the pitch.

It's not the system that is the problem, it's the down to the players. The idea of marking zonally is that nobody can get dragged out of position by following a 'decoy' run so wherever the ball drops, there should be a Liverpool player in that area to attack it. That is the problem, Skrtel may have started in the right position, regardless of what Adebeyor was up to but never attacked the ball. He waited for it to drop before heading towards it and that was too late.
People throw up statistics about how many goals we concede from free kicks and corners but over the last few seasons, we've had an excellent defensive record overall and have been using zonal marking all that time. If we switched to man marking, maybe we'd concede less from set pieces but more from other areas, like most other teams do. The zonal marking is just another one of those things that gets thrown at Rafa when things are going wrong. It worked at Valencia and it works here, things are going wrong all over the pitch.

Good post. Our defence was immaculate last year, almost impregnable. What's changed this season?, the confidence has. There is nothing wrong with the zonal marking system, the players are all failing to carry out their specific duties in set piece situations. The system is so simple, if the ball enters your 'zone', you F***ing get rid of it!

Now i'm not Albert Einstein by any means, but i think i'd be capable of performing such a menial task, don't you?

Whether it works or not shouldnt be the issue. At the end of the day a striker who stands about 6'4 or 6'5 strolled away a few steps and not one person said f**k it Ill go with him hes the main threat. These a re pro footballers surely they can think outside the box now and again

It's not the system that is the problem. The problem is the execution of it.

It's probably not as easy as it sounds. "When the ball enters your zone, you get rid of it". IMO, it also all depends on the quality of the delivery. There were probably 18 players in the box and unfortunately for us, it fell to Adebayor. Fact is, we should never have even conceded a corner.

Last season, we shut down Real Madrid, Manchester United and Aston Villa in a week with only a goal conceded, and that was a penalty. That proves Zonal Marking works even against some of the strongest teams in the world.

I have got a great idea!

When the opposition have a free kick or a corner why don't we adopt a new approach.

Make sure its a Liverpool player who gets his head on the bloody ball instead of an opposition player.

I'm sure that was the original plan...but Rafa will write it down in 'What does Rafa write in those notes on the bench?' thread

Come to think of it...

If we had played man-to-man marking and had men at the posts, Jo's 2nd offside goal could have counted.

Come to think of it...

If we had played man-to-man marking and had men at the posts, Jo's 2nd offside goal could have counted.

Won't hear a peep from the media about that though.

Seriously can people stop echoing whatever they hear in the media and actually look at our set pieces themselves? Are we defending them badly? Yes. Is it because of zonal marking? No.

Every goal we have conceded from set pieces this season you could point to individual mistakes. If people fail to their job, you will concede. Its the exact same situation with man-to-man marking. What we're suffering from is a confidence crisis, when we concede a corner or dangerous free kick you get the feeling that the alarm bells start ringing in the player's minds.

Also, we havn't got the tallest side by any means. Our starting 11 doesn't have one player you would say is phenomenol at heading. Look at Chelsea for example and you'd find a few. Clearly when this is the case, set pieces are going to be a danger.

We've kept two clean sheets on the bounce now and although they weren't solid by any means, I think that will give the players a lot of confidence to go out and do it again next week.

Seriously can people stop echoing whatever they hear in the media and actually look at our set pieces themselves? Are we defending them badly? Yes. Is it because of zonal marking? No.

Every goal we have conceded from set pieces this season you could point to individual mistakes. If people fail to their job, you will concede. Its the exact same situation with man-to-man marking. What we're suffering from is a confidence crisis, when we concede a corner or dangerous free kick you get the feeling that the alarm bells start ringing in the player's minds.

Also, we havn't got the tallest side by any means. Our starting 11 doesn't have one player you would say is phenomenol at heading. Look at Chelsea for example and you'd find a few. Clearly when this is the case, set pieces are going to be a danger.

We've kept two clean sheets on the bounce now and although they weren't solid by any means, I think that will give the players a lot of confidence to go out and do it again next week.

Fair enough but I'm wasn't implying its the zonal marking.

What I was trying to say is, both zonal and man-to-man have their advantages and disadvantages and people only see the negative sides of it when goals are conceded.

Seriously can people stop echoing whatever they hear in the media and actually look at our set pieces themselves? Are we defending them badly? Yes. Is it because of zonal marking? No.

Every goal we have conceded from set pieces this season you could point to individual mistakes. If people fail to their job, you will concede. Its the exact same situation with man-to-man marking. What we're suffering from is a confidence crisis, when we concede a corner or dangerous free kick you get the feeling that the alarm bells start ringing in the player's minds.

Also, we havn't got the tallest side by any means. Our starting 11 doesn't have one player you would say is phenomenol at heading. Look at Chelsea for example and you'd find a few. Clearly when this is the case, set pieces are going to be a danger.

We've kept two clean sheets on the bounce now and although they weren't solid by any means, I think that will give the players a lot of confidence to go out and do it again next week.

Well said mate, mistakes and lack of confidence have been the problem.

Every tactical approach in every games does have its pros and cons. Being it the players formation name it 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 or even 4-3-2-1 or defending strategies of man to man marking or zonal marking, each and every tactics will only work if you have the right set of players in every department or the right attitude of playing the game. It's like driving a car. You don't blame the car if you have a breakdown. It depends on the entire car system. Same goes with the zonal marking. You can't blame the strategy if you're conceding goals. You have to blame the players that are applying the strategy.

Last season, the zonal marking has been our greatest solid approach in our games. We conceded few goals and everybody seems to be happy with the zonal. Now with our defensive area seems to be conceding goals like flowing waters, should we blame the zonal marking? It's quite astonishing the amount of people putting the blame on the system rather than the players. It's the same people who has been quite satisfied with how the marking being efficient enough for us last season. Some has blamed our failings due to the absence of Hyypia. While I remembered last season that he's not been playing enough but still our defenders didn't let that much goals. So there's no valid reason to put the blame on the departure of Hyypia.

Like I said earlier, to have a fully functional system, you had to have the right kind of players with the right kind of attitude to play in the supposed areas. But the deciding factor is the consistency and the performance overall. You can have all the great names to fill in but still how they managed to adopt the system and played to their very best that counts. Look at Real Madrid of example. For the past 2 or 3 seasons, they had some of the well-known defenders in the world playing for them. The likes of Pepe, Sergio Ramos, Cannavaro, Marcelo, Heinze and Samuel has donned that famous white jersey of Madrid but comparing them to our own defenders of Carra, Skrtel, Agger, Hyypia, Finnan and Riise I think we're far more superior based on goals conceded. They let in more goals than I could think of. Just last season we played them and their defensive frailties caused them the CL. We tore them apart like a piece of paper. With their offensive combination of Raul, RVN, Sjneider, Higuan, Saviola, Robben and VdV to name a few, they caused nothing but minor scratches to our defensive line. They barely cost us any harm. That's because we had the right kind of players in the right kind of attitude with consistency and great performance that outshined all the Premier League teams.

But now with the lack of consistency, we let in even the stupidest of goal. Even our best performers last season played under par. We're paying heavy price of not being able to carry out the good performance last season through to this season. Couple it with our inability to get the right kind of players as targeted by Rafa, we are suffering. I don't see switching to man to man will solve any problem as the problem lies deep withing the current performance and inconsistency of the players.