It’s genuinely not zonal marking that’s the issue though. Everyone defends zonally from free kicks on the halfway line, they just do it better than us. Liverpool defend zonally and it’s not doing them any harm. Our biggest problem is still going forward, if we were more of a goal threat we could change tactically to become more solid, but we end up committing everybody forwards and having to play Sigurdsson further up because nobody else looks like scoring.
I get that there is more to it than that, but it mostly IS zonal marking, or at least Silvas version of it. It is most definitely not our lack of going forward, because that is completely irrelevant in set pieces, Im not sure why you would even think that...
You cannot argue with the sheer volume of goals that all come through set pieces that all look the same. The fundamental struggle of the system is that it removes individual responsibility. The fundamental strength of individual marking is that each player knows their job, and its greatly simplified. The reason you see open players with free shots is that Silvas version of zonal marking has no individual responsibility, so its always "someone elses" job, something that is not the case when marking individuals. The 2nd and 3rd goals by Millwall are great examples of this. They did not score on the first ball in, but defenders had "done their job" and covered their zones, and then let off because the ball was in the next guys zone. Which it was. Except the one guy was busy defending 3 and going for the first ball.
