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.
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