How Liverpool, Brentford are staying ahead of the Premier League when it comes to corners
It’s time for some game theory. Every week, it seems like another Premier League team is hiring another set-piece coach. At this point, it’s just malpractice not to have one. The most generous estimates suggest that they could be worth as many goals as an £80 million striker, adding something like an extra 0.75 goals per game to a team’s full-season tally. But even the least generous estimate suggests they’re worth it.
Let’s say having a set-piece coach creates just one extra goal over the course of the season. Even pundit Andy Gray might agree with that, right? Well, every goal scored in the Premier League is worth more than £1m. So, unless you’re paying your set-piece coach a million-pound salary — and maybe you should? — you’re getting a ton of value from the role.
But eventually, the initial advantage of focusing on set plays will disappear.
Teams like Liverpool and Brentford have scored so many goals from set plays over the past couple of seasons because they were paying attention to them when other teams weren’t. Choosing the proper taker and ball flight, designing planned movements to create space for the players who are best in the air and constantly practicing the execution was enough to create a bunch of extra goals. Plus, because most teams didn’t have a coach overseeing set-play scoring, they also didn’t have a coach who could teach them how to defend them.
Now, plenty of other teams have their own free-kick coaches. Even those that don’t should be aware by now how dangerous some teams are from a given dead-ball situation just through osmosis.
So how does this manifest in terms of goals and tactics? And what are some teams doing to stay ahead?
Much like in the sport as a whole, it’s a lot easier to defend a set piece than it is to attack from one. The former is about team-wide organization and destruction, the latter is about individual precision and execution. And so, in response to the growing threat from set plays, most Premier League teams have done the same thing when facing a corner kick: packed everyone into the box.
“The aim of defending a corner is to stop the opposition from scoring,” said Stuart Reid, Head of Set Pieces for a network of clubs that includes Serie A side Spezia. “You give yourself the best chance of that with all 10 outfielders back in the penalty area defending.”
Yet despite the defensive evolution, the likes of Liverpool and Brentford have maintained their attacking proficiency from set plays. Per Stats Perform, Liverpool leads the league in shots, expected goals and actual goals from set pieces. Brentford, meanwhile, have created the third-most shots and xG from set pieces, while scoring the sixth-most goals — despite averaging just 44% possession in their matches. They’re still scoring from corners because they’re not trying to score directly from corners.
So how do you make corners work against a packed defense? It would seem that there are two ways of attacking this new problem.
The first: Just give up! Accept that corners are no longer an inefficiency to be exploited. With 11 opposition players in the box, you’re never going to have numbers in your favor because your keeper is hanging back and someone has to take the corner. At best, you’re getting 9 vs. 11. So maybe a short corner is finally worth it.
For a lot of analysts, short corners were maddening. The average corner is more likely to lead to a goal than the average open-play possession, so by turning a corner into an open-play possession, you were just throwing away the free goal-scoring probability you were being given. But 10 defenders in the box would presumably lower your chances of scoring from a corner, potentially taking it even below the likelihood of scoring from open play. If that were the case, then passing short, recycling possession and drawing the defense back out of the penalty area would be the logical strategy.
The other option: Throw more numbers into the box. If they have everyone in the penalty area, then you don’t really have to worry about a counterattack, so you might as well push more players forward to try to cancel out their numerical advantage and get on the end of a cross.
Instead, the likes of Liverpool, Brentford and others have opted for a middle ground. They’re not playing short corners, but they’re also not pushing more bodies into the penalty area. Instead, they’re attacking with the same numbers they usually do — four or five in the box — and then positioning the rest of the team around the edge of the penalty area.
“With no counter-attacking threat, that gives the attacking team a chance to move more players upfield,” Reid said. “But rather than commit them into the penalty area where you might still get undone by a counter-attack, the extra players are used to control the outside of the penalty area.
“Players positioned on the edge of the penalty area are nothing new and has been done for years, but the number of players positioned outside the area is the new trend. Rather than provide a direct attacking threat, their job is to recycle the ball and try to create potential chances after the initial corner is cleared, and if the main attacking routines are unsuccessful.”
Take Brentford’s goal against Aston Villa from August: the announcer even says, “Everyone back for Villa” — just Emiliano Buendia is positioned outside of the penalty area. The Bees have five players right around the six-yard box, and the rest of the team is surrounding the box. The ball gets cleared, but there are no Villa players to recover it, so Sergi Canos grabs the ball, drives into the box and squares a pass that Ivan Toney eventually smashes past Emi Martinez.
Liverpool’s third against Norwich from earlier in the season was a different variation on the same theme: they attack the box with only four players, none of which include their best goal scorer, Mohamed Salah. Instead, he’s lurking on the edge of the area, the clearance comes out to him in plenty of space and bam: it’s 3-0.
In a sense, these teams are optimizing both phases of the corner. Because you know where your players are moving and where the ball is going to be served, it’s still possible that you score from the initial ball despite the massive numeral disadvantage. Two weeks ago, Brighton went with the “five-in-the-box, five-around-it” approach against Watford, and they just scored off the ball into the box.
Although you’re less likely to score off the direct ball now that there are nine of 10 opposing players in the box, it’s still worth an attempt. You’re throwing away an opportunity, however low the percentage is, by not trying. And because the opponent is more likely to successfully clear the ball, putting more players around the box makes you more likely to recover it.
As Reid put it, these teams are “basically giving [themselves] another chance at scoring,” which is exactly what Brentford did against Watford. (The video begins as they recover a cleared corner…)
While innovation for most teams still means hiring a set-piece coach and perfecting a couple of routines, Liverpool, Brentford and Brighton have already moved way beyond that phase: They’re now focused on exploiting the new environment that their own excellence helped create.
“It is an evolved way of thinking about corners,” Reid said. “But that’s what hiring specialists brings to a team: constantly trying to innovate and think of new ways to gain an advantage, in a way that an assistant manager or goalkeeping coach (who are often giving set-piece duties as part of their role) might not do as they have other things to focus on that might be a higher priority.”
Of course, it’s only a matter of time until other teams catch on and figure out their own defensive response, but it’s still hard to envision what that response might be.
Do you push more bodies out of the box and make the opponent respect the possibility of a counterattack? Or does that just reopen the door for these teams to carve you open with planned movements in the box? Wherever that push-and-pull leads to next, though, it’s pretty clear that soccer’s most rapid revolution is occurring whenever the referee decides to blow the play dead.
“There’s a lot of innovation happening around set-pieces, and there’s definitely been an increase in the quality of the coaching of them in the Premier League,” Reid said. “There’s still a lot, creatively, that teams in the Premier League can do, but I’m sure it won’t take long to see that be introduced.”
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