Quickness for centre backs

[managingmanager]

How important is quickness for centre backs? From what I've read, this is both acceleration and pace. The reason I ask is that my staff are always bugging me to set essentially all my centre bscks' individual training focus on quickness, but I feel like they'd be better off focusing on other aspects of their game (tackling, marking, positioning, strength, balance). What are your thoughts?

 

[mersk]

To ignore what your staff thinks, and make your own decision. You could either go for focusing the training on a weak point of his, improving a strong point, or just train him in the role you want him to play in.

 

[managingmanager]

To ignore what your staff thinks, and make your own decision. You could either go for focusing the training on a weak point of his, improving a strong point, or just train him in the role you want him to play in.

Yea I normally train players for a specific role, unless there's a glaring weakness in a key attribute. But they're so insistent, I thought I was missing something, like maybe I'm vastly underestimating the importance of quickness for centre backs.

 

[Maximus94]

How important is quickness for centre backs? From what I've read, this is both acceleration and pace. The reason I ask is that my staff are always bugging me to set essentially all my centre bscks' individual training focus on quickness, but I feel like they'd be better off focusing on other aspects of their game (tackling, marking, positioning, strength, balance). What are your thoughts?

Take everything your staff says with a grain of salt. Your judgement is almost always better.

That said, acceleration and pace is ESSENTIAL if you defend with either a high, or very high defensive line. Or, if you use a covering CB or sweeper. It's tactic specific.

 

[managingmanager]

Ah, gotcha. I don't use any of those, so I think I should be fine with my current approach. Thank you both!

 

[managingmanager]

Oh btw, training for a specific role focuses on the attributes that are important for that role, right? And not just increases the player's star rating for that role, like training for a new position does?

 

[kingtut313]

Oh btw, training for a specific role focuses on the attributes that are important for that role, right? And not just increases the player's star rating for that role, like training for a new position does?

yes if you go to individual training from the players profile, you can look at exactly what attributes are being trained.

and to answer your question, i dont feel quickness is all that important for a centerback. positioning, marking, tackling and jumping are all way more important to me

 

[MANUMAD]

The easiest way to make an effective winning squad is to have pace everywhere. I like even my cbs to be pacey (relative to their position ie 14/15).

But training cbs on quickness outright is silly imho.

What I do is I start by training positionally (not necessarily according to position they play but according to focus training of each position) and I come back to it every 3/4 months for possible changes (eg ball playing defender all duties to ball playing defender support). After a season or two (or more depending how players develop) I then target train particular attributes.

So a typical cb would eventually get specific training for quickness if its "low" in relation to his other attributes or to the tactic.

Oh and I never buy cbs for starting XI with less than 11 pace.

 

[David M Caine]

I prefer my first choice cb pairing to have acceleration of about 14/15 (got Sakho and Koscielny at Arsenal) but bare minimum of 11 only if the player has good mental and defensive stats to make up for being slower (Howedes).

 

[CDXtreme]

I look for pace everywhere... Depends how you play but I prefer to have lightning CBs...

Pace + Anticipation + Positioning = rock solid

 

[Jake]

Advice from staff (coaches and scouts) is only as good as that staff members attributes.