How to make your midfield pressing high?

[apvmoreira]

Hello everyone!

As the title says, im having a lot of issues with pressing and tackling in the mid.

I use a inverted triangle with one DMC with regista role and 2 MCs.

The role of the MCs, IMO should be Box to Box, so they can go up and down the pitch doing everything

Attacking i don't have many problems, besides every game my shooting/goal ratio being 30 shoots/ 20 on target/1 or 2 goals per game...

My concern is when i loose the ball. Which PPM, player role or team instructions should i have to make my 3 mids hunt the ball like a man in the desert looking for water?? All i see is the opposition passing the ball like they where on practice and my players just looking at it, leaving the 4 in the back against 5 or more...

I use:

- Pressing very high
- Tight marking
- aggressive tackling

I use this in all mids, wingers and strikers.


Thanks in advance

 

[rawket]

I use a similar 3-man midfield too.
Setting your players to close down the opposition is your best bet if you want your midfield to step up and press aggressively. If you want only your midfielders to Close Down More, consider setting it under player instructions rather than team instructions.

 

[apvmoreira]

I use a similar 3-man midfield too.
Setting your players to close down the opposition is your best bet if you want your midfield to step up and press aggressively. If you want only your midfielders to Close Down More, consider setting it under player instructions rather than team instructions.

But don't i have it already in the instructions above?

Tour answer seems very simple to such a big issue...

 

[rawket]

But don't i have it already in the instructions above?

Tour answer seems very simple to such a big issue...

Oh, I may have misunderstood you. By "Pressing very high" do you mean the Push Higher Up instruction or the Close Down More instruction? Sounds like the former.

 

[apvmoreira]

Oh, I may have misunderstood you. By "Pressing very high" do you mean the Push Higher Up instruction or the Close Down More instruction? Sounds like the former.

If i use the close down more player instruction, will that affect the team instruction to play wider?

 

[rawket]

If i use the close down more player instruction, will that affect the team instruction to play wider?

I believe it does not. Telling your team to close down more means they will press the opposition more. They will step out of their position to press more aggressively. Which means they may get dragged out of position. And this could affect the team shape somewhat. But it doesn't really clash with playing wider, which means your wide players hang around closer to the sideline and stretch the game. So no, not in any way I can think of.

So umm, are you already using the Close Down More instruction? And Push Higher Up? I'm not very clear on the instructions you've set.

To answer the question as in the thread title, to make your midfield Press High you should instruct the team to Push Higher Up so that they can challenge for the ball in more advanced areas, as well as Close Down More so that they press aggressively. That's more or less the most that you can do.

As to whether the whole team presses or just specific players (e.g. midfielders only), that's up to you. I personally would rather not have my two central defenders closing down too much. They can get dragged out of position, and they're the last people you want out of position.

Then again, I'm playing Villa and our players generally stink. I think I'm the only one with this issue.

 

[apvmoreira]

I've come up with a very unorthodox solution...

Playing now with one (1) Cb, and 5 man in the mid. Just beat Liverpool away by 6-0!!