One of my friends started doing this and then now ALL my friends have adopted this tactic that I find really cheap and have no idea how to counter, some help would be greatly appreciated :)

Basically, what they do is find team with several very fast players who can dribble (Milan, Barca, ManU, etc) and set them in a 4-3-3 formation. The three offensive players obviously are the fast ones and then LW and RW are manually adjusted to be as far into the corners of the field as possible. With this formation, EVERY play is basically a ground or lobbed through ball to these players, who will blaze across the field, reach the byeline and either cross it in or cut into the box looking for the classic cutback to an open striker.

Now, this is the part that I find particularly cheap. Because the wingers are constantly standing in line with deepest defender (sometime this happens to be the fullback covering them, sometimes they're unmarked and played onside by other defenders, in which case I often concede a goal), I have no way to defend against this. The reason is that if a fullback is marking him, the moment my cursor switches to the fullback, there's that one second pause you get when you just switch players, which gives the winger enough space to completely pull away from my defender. Often, as I mentioned, the winger isn't even covered, and then I get screwed.

Basically, I have two questions:
1. How do you get around the game's one second delay when switching players when it comes to marking really fast players?

2. Is there any way to ensure that my fullbacks are ALWAYS marking their wingers? I set them to manually aggressively mark them, but they're often still exposed.

Thanks in advance, this cheapness has made me play FIFA 09 a lot more, as I have yet to run into any tactic that compares to this level of cheapness.

Off the top of my head I'm thinking you should try putting in an extra defender to help the incoming attack.

But where? To cover both wingers, or just have an additional one in the center to defend against crosses and cutbacks?

I'd say additional in the centre

Can you be successful doing the same thing back to them? Maybe you need to work on outscoring them?

You should try this: Two full backs, two centre backs that are beside the full backs (so you basically have two people trying to stop the wingers on each side.) and one in the middle for cover. The other 2 centre defenders help the guy in the middle too if the ball goes there.

What is the formation you usually play?

I think you can try playing 2 DMs in front of the defensive line. The 2 DM can track back to help the defenders while the opponent is attacking. Sometimes they can try to block attacks on the wings. You could try a 4-5-1 formation with 2 DM, 1 AM, and 2 Side Midfielders, or a 4-3-3 formation with 2 DM, 1 AM in the middle, 2 wingers and 1 striker. Just work out your formations.

I don't know anything about PES per se (just saw the thread title on the main page and was curious), but in real soccer I would stop playing an offside trap, keep my defenders further back, so there's less or no space to play long through balls, and if that doesn't stop every attempt, deploy a sweeper.