Zonal Marking

[Neil Young]

To be fair we aint been critacised about zonal marking since Rafa's first season.

It kept getting mentioned in the media in his first season because it was a new concept, and because that was a really poor league season.

It's come up far more recently than that. It's because when we let in a goal at a set-piece, the pundits blame the system but when a team playing man-to-man let in a similar goal, it's put down to an individual error.

It's obvious most of them don't understand zonal marking (neither do I but I'm not paid to air my opinions on telly). Having said that, I've noticed that some pundits, including Andy Gray, have recently started to back away from criticising zonal marking. About bloody time too.

[Crazy-Horse]

Perhaps it's because 13 goals against after 21 games (3rd lowest currently), and 28 in 07/08 (3rd lowest in PL) and 27 in 06/07 (2nd= lowest in PL), the pundits are actually thinking this "Foreign Zonal Marking Malarky" might actually work, and we are making Tits of ourselves.

[Joe King]

Chelsea have just conceded using zonal marking. It by far is the worse system in the world

[leftpeg]

According to whoever wrote the wikipedia article on zonal marking

Amongst professional teams zonal marking is the most common system; 15 of the 16 teams that reached the knockout stages of the 2004 UEFA Champions League used zonal marking.

[robbielad9]

Did anyone catch the JT postmatch interview? Admitted that "they'd struggled a bit with zonal marking, but they'd sort it out by weekend!". How good is he then, by the way?, its taken us nearly 5 ****in years to get the hang of it. Suppose thats why he's England captain then eh?

[Kinell]

Terry mentioned it to about how the conceeded the goal and how it only happens rarely in zonal situations.

[Darkon]

To be fair we aint been critacised about zonal marking since Rafa's first season.

It kept getting mentioned in the media in his first season because it was a new concept, and because that was a really poor league season.

And that is because of the demands zonal marking puts on defenders contrary to man marking. The defenders need to know eachother very well for it to work proberly, so they don't run in to eachothers zones.

So it takes a lot more in positioning and intelligence on the pitch to play that system, but when it works it is far superior to man marking - and hence why we have had one of best defences in the league under Rafa...

[FatTony]

So Rafa is, as we Liverpool fans realise, a visionary!

Didn't Gross use zonal during his short spell at Spurs?

The Sky pundits are full of ****. We've consistently had one of the best defensive records in the league since Rafa came here, yet whenever we lose or concede the retards start harping on about zonal marking. Its bull****.