I'm with Hull City, and my back four are awful. We can always gain the lead but we can never hold on to it. The defenders themselves are strong but are consistantly out of position and can't mark their man. Plus, out of the four draws from my first 7 matches, I have a late equilizing goal from my opponent in 3 of them.

Are these defensive errors fixed somewhat in the patch?

NO, what SI clearly did was make Strikers and other offensive players miss more goal chances and make super GK again.

Have a wander over to the tactics forum, there's a lot of discussion there.

FWIW, keep your back 4 in position by making sure they only close down on own area, have the same defensive rating, forward runs set to rarely, that sort of thing.

I found that the team will maintain it's shape better with zonal marking, so you may look at your CB's to see if they're set to man mark and change that.

oh, and it the last 5 minutes or so, if you're ahead, play very (or ultra) defensively, short passing, slow, and keep the ball.

There was quite a long and interesting thread in the bugs forum about defending. Well worth taking a look at.

As for will it be fixed in the patch? I'm not holding my breath.

i set my CBs to "own area" closing down. this means that the midfielders close down and the CBs stay in position/man mark. it forces the opposition to take long shots, as they can't find space.

IMO defensive mistakes are much improved on FM07 where you could barely go a game without an error- at any level.

I found that at this level that quick defenders are the be all and end all- regardless of other stat, as long as they are quick they seem to be ok.

not necessarily...Anthony Gardner is fast in the game, but i find him error-prone. Gianni Zuiverloon is another fast defender, but he's strangely inconsistent(not to mention young, but Melchiot AND Taylor are both injured, so i have to play him)

What level are they playing at?

premier league. why?