Close the pocket is one of the hardest things to pull off in the game hands down.
It's equally punishing OF allowed to remain active but all you need to do is reconnect the cut off territory. If you held 75% of the map I hardly thing it would be so hard to push back slightly and recap a single point...
The Axis player used some kind of Arty both at the same time... one or both was close the pocket.
We were crushing them and suddenly all the map was on fire... Things like that could not happen that easily in Coh1.
Skill must matter !!!! Big area arty on narrow map is lame !!!!!