[Albion] Zonal Marking at Corners

[est.83]

Of course Tarkowski was fouling Maupay on the first corner but what on earth was Maupay (and Alzate) doing when Mee hit the bar? They just let Mee go and have a free header. I understand that Mee was lucky that Sanchez didn't tip the ball further away but still - defenders should have continued their run with Mee and marked him properly.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

I'll be honest, I have no problem with zonal marking primarily because there's a lot more too it than simply marking your zone. A lot of time and energy goes into coaching the players to effectively defend zonally and if you look specifically at yesterday, all 11 players were back in our box, and everyone (bar Chris Wood) in "the mixer" is surrounded by Brighton players. Tarkowski just steamrollered Maupay to get a header in. That's not a failure of zonal marking (in my opinion) just poor refereeing/defending depending on your viewpoint.

I guess it's easy to blame zonal marking as a concept when compared to man marking. After all, no goals have ever been conceded via a failure of man marking.

This is fair, you're going to concede from a percentage of corners anyway.

I also think that referreing interpretation of penalty box incidents holds huge sway over whether you go zonal or not. With man to man marking there is inevitably more grappling and forwards are going to throw themselves to the floor and will sometimes get a pen. With zonal marking the contact is going to be from the blockers (who's job it is to stop the danger players getting anywhere near the ball). This is likely to occur further away from the ball and is much less likely to result in a penalty.

In the last few years attackers have been getting many more penalties for holding in the box. This is a natural consequence of VAR. It can see more in the corner melee than a ref can. Managers, including GP, have decided that man to man isn't worth the risk of the extra penalties