What to do When: Up Against a Big Target Man

A target man can turn an average team into a strong one. As seen in Andy Carroll at Newcastle and now West Ham, and Marouane Fellaini's performances with Everton in the opening games of the Premier League. With the majority of the opposition's attacks focused around one player who dominates the aerial duels, a tall target man can be a side of any quality's downfall, just ask Mr Ferguson.

However, since their attacks are predominantly centered around this player, shutting him out and curtailing his effect can restrict the opposition's chances greatly. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to do so.

Although it is almost impossible to fully restrain the target man's effect, there are some tactical changes you can make to adapt to his influential style of play and set out your defensive shape based around him to reduce his prominence.

Play a High Defensive Line

Defending with a deep defensive line...

The majority of a tall target man's goals will come from crosses into the box, therefore, to stop the strikers influence, you also need to stop his teammates in the wide areas from putting in consistent delivery. A side can do this simply by playing with a high defensive line, reducing the amount of space the wingers have to run into, thus decreasing the number of chances said wide men have to cross the ball into the penalty area.

If you drop deep, then you increase the space available inside your own half, as your defensive line moves into the space that was originally behind them. This space allows the winger to run at your full-backs, with time and space to pick out his teammate in the box, or to conjure up a dribble to beat his man.

and with a higher defensive line.

As you can see in the diagram on the right, the defending side are playing with a deep defensive line, with the line of four sitting just on the edge of the box. This gives the right winger with the ball two options in delivering to the target man; hit in a ball from deep, or attempt to beat the left back and whip in a cross from closer to the byline. With these two options for the winger, chances are that the target man will receive numerous balls from wide, and with his dominant ability in the air, will make you pay for giving him the opportunity.

With a high line however, the winger is without option one, since a deep cross isn't on since the winger will pick up the ball nearer the middle than the defending side's area. Upon beating the full-back, the winger has a lot of space to run into and could be in with a one-on-one situation instead which is this set-ups downfall, especially if your defenders lack pace against a fast opposition. The 6'3 striker on the other hand, is highly unlikely to break the offside trap which allows you to press high up the pitch without worrying about the consequences. As long as you have alert full-backs, the opposition will be short of chances against your high line.

Minimise the Amount of Fouls you Make

Albeit a rather simple point, this is often overlooked when trying to diminish the influence of a target man. Probably the time when the target man is at his most powerful is from set pieces, especially if the side have a specialist free-kick taker. Obviously to stop this tricky situation of defending a free kick against a towering forward, you need to reduce the amount of fouls you commit.

Press their Centre-Backs, and Keep your Largest Defender by the Target Man

By closing down the men at the back, you disrupt their vision in passing by forcing them to play a ball quickly, which stops them picking out the target man. Without the time they would have, the majority of their passes will go astray, therefore the long balls which the tall forwards feeds off will be scarce.

When Everton played Manchester United in the opening match of the season, Marouane Fellaini was the best player on the night, winning the majority of his aerial duels and ending with a well-deserved goal. By positioning himself by Michael Carrick, who was United's centre-back during the match, the Belgian international saw a lot of the ball, many of them from the goalkeeper as the chalkboard tells us. He was so dominant in the air because the man of the match is two inches taller than Carrick. Ferguson could have stopped Fellaini by simply giving a player of a similar height the role of marking the Belgian, who would've challenged him much more than the English midfielder, who is two inches shorter.

Have your Wingers Support the Full-Backs

As I said earlier, the wingers' support is crucial in how influential a target man to be, therefore nullifying the wingers' effect, also curtails the striker's. Another option, which can be used as well as or instead of the high defensive line is to simply position your wingers deep to cover the full-backs. This will, like the first point, make it more difficult for the opposition wide men to get balls into the target man, making him much less threatening. If you use this alongside a high defensive line, then the space on the wings is compressed greatly, and also reduces the possibility of the wingers getting in behind the defence, as the defending wingers can track the opposition wide men. It could be enough to almost make the opposition wingers completely ineffective.

In the diagram on the right, notice how little space the yellow side has, because the blue team's wide men have compacted the space available by shortening the distance between them.


The best way (and one of the only) to stop a target man from being so effective is to cut out his teammates' support, as he requires good delivery to make an impact on the game. These points are rather simple, although the importance of cutting out his support is crucial, and some simple points are overlooked which are worth mentioning.

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