Besides zonal marking, the defence pressed hard and maintained a high offside line. Their teams counter-attacked with long passes played in behind the opposition's defence. Instead of playing with a team that was very spread out from one end of the field to the other, with a libero who stayed in his penalty area and a centre-forward who never tracked back, they set up a system of zonal defence, a back four, players pushing up and getting the ball forward into the final area much more quickly. Houghton and Hodgson had considerable success, winning five out of six Swedish titles between 1974 and 1979 with Malmö reaching the 1979 European Cup Final, losing 1–0 against Nottingham Forest.