In what way struggle? That they get beaten, that they don’t slow down runners, blocking, physically? 

At that age, we covered the basics. That the first rule they had was just to slow the attacker down to let your teammates get into the right place, so we did drills to help them get their body in the right shape and position. This also helped them to stop diving in to challenges.

Second thing we covered was about cover, how the midfielders can help defend so you end up in a 2v1. This also helped us press from the front (this takes time, I’ve been with this team from little to u15).

Then we covered how to work as a unit, and communication. So if one presses the attacker, where do the other players need to be to help them and be successful.

Hopefully that helps. 

In what way struggle? That they get beaten, that they don’t slow down runners, blocking, physically? 

At that age, we covered the basics. That the first rule they had was just to slow the attacker down to let your teammates get into the right place, so we did drills to help them get their body in the right shape and position. This also helped them to stop diving in to challenges.

Second thing we covered was about cover, how the midfielders can help defend so you end up in a 2v1. This also helped us press from the front (this takes time, I’ve been with this team from little to u15).

Then we covered how to work as a unit, and communication. So if one presses the attacker, where do the other players need to be to help them and be successful.

Hopefully that helps. 

thanks for replying, its more the slowing runners down and getting into position to block and not dive in, so what you say makes a lot of sense.

are there any drills you would suggest? we tried 2 v 2 and 3 v 2 last week, but as I mentioned, most of the attackers aren't at the level of the better teams we play so it was a bit too easy for the defenders

the aim is to get them to be so ingrained it becomes second nature, so lots of repetition. We did some work in small groups doing one v one. Aim of the winger was to just let them practice body shape. This video has some of the coaching points we used in it - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=defending+tips+football+junior

To make it harder - can you get a get players from an older team to get involved to help with the drill? 

In terms of skills btw - we did a ball work session in regularly in training. Each boy had a ball, practise ball mastery for 5 minutes. As a result, they're all very comfortable on the ball and their skill level went up. It's slow work but you'll see a difference in a few weeks. We made if very fun, not regimented. We all had a go and the kids liked seeing they were better than us!