Sep.04
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Mister Wong
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Requirements
A defence that has decent positioning, decisions, concentration, anticipation, teamwork and pace. I say ‘decent’ because even the best defender in the world would not have fifteen in all of these areas. It is also useful to have one defender with good determination and influence, possibly your captain.
This defender would be perfectly suited to playing in an offside trap
A goalkeeper with good command of area and communication. Also, if you are playing the offside trap with a high defensive line, it may be necessary to employ your goalkeeper as the ‘sweeper keeper’, especially if you have slow defenders. In order to this the keeper will need decent rushing out, positioning, concentration, decisions and anticipation. Then set your goalkeeper’s mentality to attacking and his closing down to normal. Please take into account that the better attributes your goalkeeper has in those areas, the higher you can place his mentality and closing down.
This goalkeeper would be perfectly suited to play behind an offside trap and act as a sweeper keeper
When to use the offside trap
If you are an attacking side who play with a normal/high d-line then playing offside could help your side from being vulnerable to counter attacks and generally cutting down on conceding goals. Also if you are in the top seven of your division that will be constantly coming up against lesser sides that will try and play defensive against you, then it could be important to use the offside trap.
Another reason to use the offside trap is because you are, once again, coming up against a defensive side that plays 4-3-2-1, 4-4-2 (no farrows), 4-5-1. Especially in lower leagues, these sides will try and play a defensive, low tempo game until the opportunity arises to ‘hoof’ the ball to their target man. This is lethal if they are playing with a fast target man, or big target man with fast wingers.
How to make it work
Your side will need to be playing an attacking style, whilst the d-line should be at least normal but best effective when pushing up. However, you should take the speed of your defenders, the speed of opposition’s attack and how much you are attacking (the more attacking you play, the higher the d-line). The only time I recommend playing with a deeper line is when you are against opposition who play defensive possession football, the type of opposition mentioned above. The reason behind this because when you lose possession, you defenders will play deep, when you retrieve and are on the attack they will push up; something the Reading team executed brilliantly last season. Also, if you play an extreme pushing up d-line, then it could be vital to employ the sweeper keeper (unless you super quick defenders), which is mentioned above. Although it is your decision, I believe your defenders should be playing a loose man marking system. I say this because if your defenders are trying to mark an attacker tightly then he maybe pulled out from the line of defence which could throw your offside trap into turmoil.
