Zonal or Man Marking. Which one should you choose?

There have been one or two articles on this topic before and lots of queries and comments on the various forums. FM Fanboys's post is a brief summary and flags up the most important fact that I have seen as well during my games, there is no perfect strategy and defending is not 100% foolproof. The best you can do is try to stack the chips in your favour so that, over the season, you feel you have been in control more than the victim of some bizarre situations.

I had three main objectives when setting up this article;

Develop a better understanding of the zonal and man marking systems
Have a clear idea on what to look for in the game in terms of formation and set piece set up in order to find out what system the opposition is playing
Some ideas on how to combat the oppositions instructions and set up for my own advantage
I am currently managing Notts Forest so I will be using screenshots from that game.

What is Zonal/Man Marking?

I had heard of zonal marking lots of time - for me it was a bit like someone talking about an aspect of physics - I had heard of it, nodded my head in agreement, but didnt quite understand the ins and outs of it. I heard about it again when Benitez was slated for trying to use it with his Liverpool side. This article by Don Howe sets out the most common attack on zonal marking - players are not intelligent to cope with anything more complicated than having one man to mark at set pieces. The idea of having to mark space seems too abstract for English footballers. The thing that makes a complicated system even more complicated for football managers is that the pundits can not agree. This article mounts a strong defence in favour of zonal defence but I guarantee you will still, more than likely, be scratching your head at the end of it.