Who needs open play? An analysis of Arsenal 23/24 and their corner-focused creation
Or I watched 141 Arsenal corners and THIS is what I found
If you had told me 10 years ago, around about when Arsenal were last ‘quasi-contenders’, that the current iteration of the side looked stagnant in free-play but utterly dominant on set-pieces, I would’ve assumed the ‘Wenger Out, Allegri In’ brigade had finally won, and that we were deep into the entrenched midtable slog I’d expected when the vibes left the Emirates. Turns out I’d be half right.
This season, after the heartbreak of the post-Saliba title-charge capitulation, the team have sacrificed those free-flowing vibes that Wenger and by extension Wenger’s Arsenal epitomised, in exchange for a fresh steel spine that can (hopefully) get this team over the line when it really matters, and keep them in the fight for long enough too. Whilst this feels like it could be a commentary on the nature of the modern game and its fluctuating relationships to substance and what is left of style (it also is), it’s the clearest example of Arteta learning from the failings and successes of the sides he captained as well as the developments of the statistically-framed game we have now.
Nothing really captures all this quite like the emphasis that has been placed on the still elements of the game under Arteta through set-piece coach Nicolas Jover. In fact, I can’t quite put enough emphasis on how much of an emphasis they’ve been this season, with 14 of Arsenal’s 26 goals (54% — that’s more than half for anyone who needed it more plainly) coming from corners, set-pieces, or penalties per Understat. The closest in the PL in this regard is Luton, with 50%, but I feel that barely counts as they’ve scored 10 total. For further hilarious context: Arsenal, the side synonymous with getting dunked on in the air and doing ‘tippy tappy BS’, are more set-piece driven than a team with James Ward-Prowse in it.
Maximising the side’s controllable moments is nothing new; famously Brentford and FC Midtjylland have been doing this for a while, but this feels quite radical for Arsenal. Not relying the open-play messes of presses, counter-presses, deep-blocks, under- and over-laps, and all the grey area in-between, and instead giving the side a baseline of chance creation, is a fairly smart and safe way to improve the teams floor whilst giving space for the teams ceiling to grow as the players do. It might be a bit ugly, and it might be a bit un-Arsenal, but being quite honest, winning titles has been fairly un-Arsenal for 2 decades: this small departure is worth the punt.
However, with it being so alien to the standard open-play fixated Wengerite, analysis on this new style is difficult to find — hence this article (thanks to my favourite Pot Shot Pod boys for planting this idea in my head a few weeks ago). Using good ol’ fashioned video analysis, and a sprinkling of stats, I’ll be trying to find out what we’re actually doing to be so good at these — finding our patterns, finding the explanations of them, and looking at where we could go next.
Section 1: In-swingers
The casual’s favourite, the in-swinger. Fundamentally it makes more sense to get the ball going towards the net you want to score in, and add in that it helps with the whole conservation of momentum concept so that your players don’t need the neck strength of your mother, the inswinger is a standard go-to. How do Arsenal play this then?
In general, as per last season, this is Arsenal’s Plan A, or at least the bedrock of all the other Plans, A through to probably around Q. fbref has us at around 99% inswingers in the PL this season, aligning with last season’s bias for it of around 95% — and although I’d dispute some of those numbers, it’s basically true that we’re almost exclusively inswingers. Part of the reason for this is that we’re slightly blessed in terms of crossers from these positions, with Saka, Martinelli, and Trossard especially possessing great deliveries despite how little we see these in open play. They’re not Trent, Robertson, Milner levels, but they’re pretty damn good for getting the pace and whip that will piss off a backline. I will mention here however that I won’t especially look at places the ball ends up off deliveries, as I feel this can be slightly ‘variancey’, so I’ll be looking primarily at player movement and these strategies in order to ascertain the more trained aspects of our approach — I’ll try introducing a bit of this placement stuff to inform some wider models, but just focusing on delivery would circumvent intention in some cases.
Looking directly at the strategies, the club are super interesting this season, making use of their technically blessed deliverers and newly bulked up deliverees in a bunch of ways which previously they perhaps didn’t have access to:
Plan A: The Trash Compactor
The first one is what I’d like to name as ‘The Trash Compactor’, and is our Plan A of our Plan A, with a fairly core cast driving it.
Shown below, the core ideology of the play is to use our big bodies to create space for our 1v1 specialists, combined with the potential of winning any front post battles should the delivery fall that way. I’d argue the latter really comes secondary to the former in my viewings: often I see very little attempt to actually win the ball from the front surge.
For starters, we take the pushers: usually Rice, Saliba, and one other (We’ll get to Havertz in a second), using their momentum generated from deep starting positions, and forcing the often-static zonal markers at the top edge of ‘the goalposts’ to commit hard to the front post, in response to the sheer volume of bodies.
What has been really good about this strategy in my view is how many teams are essentially shit scared of it, and you can witness the reaction in-game — teams will start with a heavy back-post weighting of markers (clearly in response to where our players are starting, and where I feel we actually want the ball to go), and, after seeing us win a few front post headers usually through Kai or Gabriel charges, end with a large collection of players where we actually do want them i.e. standing still at the front post, where they have to do a lot to combat inertia to stand a chance of influencing our delivery.
This then leaves the specialists: the standard for this is Gabriel, who is a fantastic battler in these situations, and after watching it is no wonder why he’s our regular corner scorer. He has a good sense of place, and a better sense of how to win a box battle against a marker. Alongside Gabriel we can either have a lurker, someone like Havertz (see his recent top-of-the-head scuff vs Sevilla), or an arriver — see Martinelli in the clip below.
These roles are a bit more dynamic in general, but they are still functionally a generation of the primary group. Especially notable is the area that we’re opening up for these players; it’s not just the ability to have a 1v1 vs a marker, which we should win on qualitative superiority quite regularly, but we look to stretch the markers beyond the posts. Corner xG is typically hampered by 2 factors: one being the fact that headers are really hard, the other being the volume of bodies between shooter and goal. We’re trying to eliminate the latter of these problems with this method, and occasionally limiting the former with our arrivers and their timings. There are a lot of examples of different types, which I can specify a bit more in a secondary section, but these are the core tenets of this plan.
A clear example of this is in Nketiah’s 2nd goal vs Sheffield Utd. I want to pay special mention to just how much we dominated this game in set plays — this is an absolute mauling, and a demonstration of just how un-Arsenal this side is. Sheffield Utd aren’t a particularly physical side, but they caused Tottenham and Man Utd big problems in their robustness at the back, and we simply didn’t feel this. Whereas most teams want to remain strongly zonal against us — not a bad plan given our hotspots are pretty well-defined — Sheffield went essentially man-to-man — sacrificing a back-poster for an additional spare at the front in some quasi-zonal move, but weirdly marking both of our box-edge players (esp. weird given my section on this type later).
This is a bad move, and every single one of our runners have a field day here, double-so as they allow us to really shit-house the GKs. Our shithouser is the feature Arsenal fans will likely have noticed in our corner tactic, and its one usually reserved for Ben White, but can sparingly be handed to Rice and Saliba — 3 players we clearly don’t see as large losses in the main contests. For Eddie’s goal, White is doing this spectacularly well, causing the spill that drops to Eddie in our inorganically empty 6 yard box. Rice, Kiwior, and Saliba are excellent compactors here — Kiwior rush’s front post, with Rice delaying slightly to drag two central-space markers with him into the mess, and Saliba coming up behind to close off the back for any retreats when the ball has loftily flown over him. Eddie is in a 1v1, and moves really nicely to shake him off and finishes well.
What I enjoy a lot is that commentators are seemingly fixated with our ‘focus’ on the backpost for corners, purely on volume of runners we have starting there because of this strategy — when they’ve kind of got the right answer the wrong way. Our strength at the backpost comes from our removal of density, the vacating of space, in moments of misdirection almost. I’d be willing to bet we score a good few more from these backpost moments as the season continues, as we’ve actually been quite unlucky (imo imo).
Part A ii — The GK Hop
An interesting quirk I’ve noticed coming in since around the Utd game, but moreso in the last few weeks as Havertz reclaimed his starting berth, is a growing corollary on the Trash Compactor; I’m assuming one introduced to increase the variation of scoring method we have (impressive, considering the volume of these already). First shown here vs Man Utd, to avoid the strategy teams have taken against us of clogging the ‘pre-front-post’ space, and to avoid being caught up in the compaction itself, we will regularly have a player who hops through the goalline to loop to the front post, taking the path of least resistance from post to post and doing so without alerting any markers (think video game stealth mission here). Here this was Eddie, and worked as a really effective way to get a short corner without all the clog that arises from setting one up, but often this is Kai — you can see the best loop example in the Sheffield Utd clip above, and this explains why he’s been more frequently at the very front of the queue of this front-post surge. This is primarily used when teams don’t employ post-men, and works to disrupt the GK a bit but also advance past defenders on their wrong side, meaning this player will basically have a free run to whatever space they fancy — especially when facing zonal systems.
Anyone who’s tried to gaslight themselves that Kai was a good use of £65m (I actually am a large fan, as an aside, but sixty-five million is not Edu’s finest bargaining moment) will know that a large strength of his game is his ability to win the front post ball on corners. This was noted by The Analyst primarily as a defensive strength, but this threat remains pertinent in offense too, and as mentioned above, a lot of the time the point of these front players isn’t really to win the ball — it’s to make the defenders think they are. Kai’s movement and timing is always excellent on these, and his magnetism for the front defenders is really helpful at opening up between the posts. He also could have 2 or 3 goals from this position with better luck — below is a really close effort from the Man City game where he’s covered well by Walker. I’d like to see him used a bit more as an arriver in the middle, where his raumdeuter-y nature can flourish, but this current usage works well.
Saliba actually used an alternate of this alternate (I’m aware this is already quite silly, but this is the joy of set-piece analysis) to score vs Burnley. When going for his loop, he stops early to position himself directly in-front of Trafford where he has the easiest of times to head in. He repeats this minutes later for the Zinchenko goal, and can actually be see doing this all the way back vs Man Utd — using their ultra-defensive approach and Onana line-hugging against them. This is an interesting use of Saliba, who isn’t actually that dominant at ‘crashing’ headers or duels in the box like Gabriel, so giving this athletic freak essentially a free vertical works really well for me. Obviously he’s also big enough to form a really good part of the front line compaction squad alongside Rice (as can be see for Tomiyasu’s goal vs Sheffield), and overall the two strategies compliment him nicely — albeit not perhaps what you’d expect looking at him.
Plan B — Cat & Mouse
Now I’m likely going to say this a lot relating to these strategies, but I think this is my favourite. A lot of this relates to what I was referencing earlier, where defensive teams react to our offensive strategies — this is especially clear in our case compared to rivals, I’d argue, because we get so many corners in comparison to the rest of the league. Since we get so many, each has diminishing importance in terms of generating an immediate goalscoring chance; this can explain why we are fairly low in the xG per corner ranking compared to someone like Everton. Everton have the ball less, therefore attack less in general play due to the natural ‘badness’ of their squad in this sense, so utilising the set plays they generate becomes imperative for them winning (or not losing) games. We have the ball 60.9% of the time and get a league-high 6.85 corners p90 per fbref — the second highest in the league, Liverpool, has 5.92 — so we can use a few as testing grounds.
Think of this then as a boxer or MMA-er setting up a punch or kick. We use The Trash Compactor and a strong front-post push to invite defences to react accordingly i.e. defenders congregate at the front post — see Sevilla H, Man Utd H, West Ham A, and a load of others. We retain roughly the same shape, with a strong back-post loading of typically 4 players, maybe even 5. On these corners however, whilst the opposition braces for the front post, we now either have a man-for-man advantage, or we have a 1v1 situation for the majority of our runners — exactly what we were aiming to achieve before. This has led to some strong chances in each of the above, and in general this strategy freaks defensive teams out. Gabriel, again, is fantastically effective on this, as can be Nketiah and Havertz, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some simple head-ins at the back post over the next couple of months given how well we’re engineering these.
Plan C-F — The game-by-game alternates
So to briefly give a deeper idea at how our structure does actually change on an oppositional basis, here is a list of particular alterations which I noticed, as well as possible explanations for them:
Burnley — We had a much more 2D line approach to our back-post stacking on Martinelli’s corners than Saka’s. I would assume this has a lot to do with the pace of these crosses, as well as the whip that Saka generates compared to Martinelli (as Saka’s tend to start wider, Martinelli’s are far more arrowed)
Newcastle — Martinelli takes a far more active box role on Saka’s corners here, rather than his usual position of transition guard, likely due to Newcastle’s fairly strong man-to-man approach on the primary set of deliverees. On the “Eddie should 100% have a penalty here” corner, Martinelli earns himself good space at the back post, and begins to creep more and more into the box as we enter the ‘chase the game’ phase after their “‘“goal”””. Overall this game is very difficult to judge because our deliveries are terrible, but Newcastle did a good job.
Sevilla (A) — We don’t even bother trying the front post strategy as Sevilla have it deeply locked up, sticking all the big lads beyond them, all impressively static, and wait for the ball to come through. This carried on until the very last corner of the game, where Sevilla adjust to fall backwards a bit and we suddenly get a load of space in the centre, but this falls into the Plan B.
Chelsea — These corners betray how much we respected Chelsea’s transitional threat, as we had 3 players on the edge in order to control the second phase for every single one, compared to the 2 we typically position on the D. I noted when watching that this represented perhaps our worst % of actually scoring, but best for retrieving the ball following. The second half Chelsea react to us on two separate occasions, once to go very zonal (we should score), and then to go 1v1 (Gab eats his marker alive, Tomiyasu destroys Gallagher).
Fulham — We sit on Leno because Arteta knows how to hold a grudge. Martinelli also aggressive in his box movement again, a trend vs deep sitting GKs.
Section 2: Outswingers
You’ll be grateful to know this section is shorter, because we rarely bother with outswingers (and frankly mostly suck at them). The first instance came vs Spurs and the last came vs Lens, so a 3-game span all-in-all. Things like this serve well to support my theory that we see a lot of our corners as testers for future strategies, with this extending from game to game rather than within the same 90 minutes.
We don’t seem to have particular strategies here, so instead I’ll note what we can see in terms of a general strategy (and why we seem to struggle in these).
Again with these, we look to vacate the between-post space, with a similar front post structure but, naturally, a wider stance at the back post, with Gabriel and Tomiyasu starting out closer to the edge of the area than the 6 yard to accommodate for the additional power generation on their end. The best example we have of this is the Tomiyasu miss vs Lens, where we pin at both posts and give him a clear run onto an inviting ball. In these moments you can particularly see how good Tomiyasu is at in-box movement, weirdly. I’m not sure whether its his long legs or big-ass head giving him some good top weighting, but he’s very good at earning himself some space at the back end of the 6 yard, and he uses this quite well for his Sheffield Utd goal.
Havertz has also played an important role in these types, taking a few good markers with him each time with his hops, but outswingers are exclusively targeting the 6 yard at this point, meaning his runs are truly dummy runs here — not just chance maximisers.
Versus Brentford in The Bobbins, our 2 non-ET corners were again outswingers, but with very little success. A lot of this is to do with our and Brentford’s respective lineups, with Brentford going big-boys (by virtue of not having reserves) and our front line and midfield possessing one genuinely good corner threat in Kai Havertz, alongside 4 players under 6ft and a man who might snap in half if he jumps too hard: Emile Smith-Rowe. Going wider so we can avoid what is a staunch Brentford zonal block, as well as a club with notoriously proactive GKs*, is not an awful idea in principle and allows our player movement to have a bit more control, but I don’t feel this was optimal. Short corners similar to that used vs Everton would have probably allowed us to avoid the profile mismatch we had here, as well as generating better movement-specific attacks at the back post (think Eddie vs Man Utd H last year), but I appreciate trying to out-corner Brentford is a fool’s game.
*It must be noted that Flekken is not showing this to the same extent as Raya last year — nor Lens’ GK Brice Samba, who sits in the 89th percentile for cross claims per fbref, making it not a particular surprise we didn’t give Lens any freebies in this regard.
The key here is that this style really limits the impact of Gabriel, basically positioning him as a facilitator for back-post runners like Tomiyasu (and likely Havertz if lineups permit). I don’t think that’s a good thing, but with the amount of practice we get, it could be worth a try?
Section 3: Short Corners
I am aware I’ve already announced my favourite, but I was lying. I am a short corner apologist and champion, and think frankly they’re underused in the modern game, especially given the emphasis on territory, possession, and manipulation. I’m not saying they’re always great, but I think they are a fairly unexamined set-piece alternate which not a lot of teams have properly embraced.
To keep this section fresh compared to others, we won’t go through strategy here, but rather I’ll note what I see as the core tenets of this style of corner, providing examples of when we have (or maybe should have) benefitted from it.
Core 1: Tempo Control
Notts County boss (and tactico favourite) Luke Williams recently said about he uses short corners as a form of rest-negation for his opposition — which is definitely valuable at the lower ends of the pyramid — and notes how it fits into a wider game model of ball-in-play time that is particularly effective against sides without physically blessed runners like Dominck Szoboszlai and Declan Rice. Arsenal meanwhile became notorious for the opposite of this against Everton; employing a strategy which focused on keeping the ball out of Everton’s comfort area in set-piece terms, leading to the infamous “HOW long to take a corner???” discussion which I’ve not seen levelled at winning favourites before, but nevertheless.
The key here is how both sides implement the change in protocol to control the game-state, and maintain tempo that is favourable to their systems, and this is something I feel Arsenal would benefit from utilising more (LATE EDIT: they did! We got a rarely-seen first-half referee warning for time-wasting vs Brentford).
In away games where Arsenal are out-physicalled, which should be rare given the current squad composition, the use of a short corner allows us to decide when to speed into the box — into their area — and when to keep manipulating in (more) secure possession. Everton isn’t the only time we’ve done this either (albeit it is the only time we’ve scored from it this season): away at Sevilla, and at home to Man Utd our strikers (GJ and EN respectively) have repeated close to the same move as Trossard to escape marking and give us a dangerous front-foot possession on the edge of the area. This is an Arsenal side with a lot of intelligent footballers — this allows us to utilise their tempo understanding far better than a single cross.
To be clear, we are already using tempo intuitively on these versions: most notably, when collecting from Martinelli, Ødegaard will start mid-dribble, carrying the ball towards the 2 defenders marking close and instantly putting them on the backfoot (rather than receiving from Martinelli at a distance, which inherently involves some variability, and translates the front foot into some sort of limbo until the pass is completed). This feature is neat, and whilst I’m not sure how many other teams are using it as well, it is a nice reflection of the minutiae we focus on in preparing these routines.
My favourite example for this, which I will return to in other aspects, is Nketiah’s first goal vs Manchester United last season. We finally earn the ball at the corner flag, and rather than launching it into Utd’s heavily defended area, we go short and use this moment to allow us to create a chance on our terms. As much as Trent may argue, it is very difficult to surprise a team with when you take a corner — going short gives the taking side an upper hand in not only how we approach the box, but when.
Core 2: Block manipulation
Returning again to the Nketiah goal, and why it has become my go-to for arguing against short corner pooh-poohers, we need to consider the tactical benefits of going short; beyond the wider corner benefits of “hey nice we’ve got a ~3% chance of scoring”. Up until this point in the game, Man Utd had employed a fairly strong midblock, and Arsenal possession in the final 3rd was nicely limited through good pressure up-field and a high line. This naturally doesn’t fit with Arsenal’s MO in terms of ‘winning games’, which was to smother the opposition with high-zone possession until one of the various Good Players or Good Tactics does something. With this corner then, Arsenal allowed themselves to essentially skip another build-up phase, and speedrun into final action territory — or at least end-game combination territory. For teams with staunch midblocks, I’d argue, going short represents a very real opportunity for us to reclaim our zones and hence game control.
What I would particularly favour in these scenarios is the stronger implementation of the half-space cross, which is growing in usage over the last few weeks — admittedly very poorly. On short corners, it is very notable how our back ‘wall’ of 3–4 giants do not push through to the front post, and make use of the separation between ‘defensive layers’ to get a big advantage at the far post, so it does seem that these deeper first-time crosses are an ambition of ours. This particular structure has been tried vs. Sevilla H, Burnley, Newcastle, Chelsea, Bournemouth, and Utd — but only once per game. Quick movement of the ball in this position has given us multiple occasions of a ballplayer with time and space for a first-time cross (or at least a quick one). If we can iron this delivery issue out a bit more, this backpost imbalance we create from this moment presents a notably improved chance of a 🤠 outcome rather than a 🤬 one.
My only concern with this, which is partially clear in the rate of attempts for this style, is that it is partially reliant on disguise, and is quite easily marked out of the game (see: Sheffield Utd sitting close to both of our box-edge players), so practice for this is basically the one time a game we can use it. Whilst it’s a nice idea for these, the practicality of us seeing these regularly and with actual impact is questionable.
Core 3: Set piece within a set piece
This partially falls within the previous, but these were not meant to be completely discrete anyway. Speaking of discretisation, what I especially like within our short corner planning is the stages we implement in the design, in regards to player movement and triggers. This gievs us, as the title suggests, essentially a secondary set-piece from a location which the defence can’t have, or at least haven’t likely, trained for; increasing the potential maximal value of the move.
An example of this I quite like comes from the cursed Chelsea game, where Martinelli goes short to Ødegaard.
As an aside, it is quite noticeable when we’re about to go short, as the backpost players form a very visible queue that we typically don’t if we’re aiming for a standard inswinger — see below for a visual comparison of our structure in a typical inswinger and our short pass variant.
In this corner we see the standard start point, with Ødegaard beginning mid-dribble and carrying towards the two players. As he does so, the player line-up in the queue once again at the backpost, in a 3v1 with additional space due to the gravity of the corner duo, but interesting bit comes later — following Ødegaard’s pass pack to Martinelli. As soon as the pass happens, the players all move into formation —Rice and Saliba opening a gap for Gabriel (the best one) to attack through, and Zinchenko dropping off the defensive line into the now empty edge of the area. This attack eventually comes to nothing — partially due to Ødegaards pass cancelling out the forward momentum we’d earned, partially due to Chelsea locking us in this wide zone effectively — but this has potential.
This would perfectly suit the half-space crosses we’ve slowly introduced into open-play, and looked to repeat against Brentford in the most recent game, but right now there seems to always be an air of sloppiness accompanying our set-ups. Once this rust disappears (I’m assuming like the rest of the team’s woes it will), this represents a new form of chance creation that has been weirdly underrun in the Arteta playbook — just as I hope the short corner in general does as well.
Section 4: What to expect next
So all of this is nice as an observational piece, but time to put my money where my mouth is, and say where I expect the club/Jover to look towards next.
My primary is that we won’t stop scoring these. Our routines are designed, at least broadly, about maximising the opportunity for our best threats, and the main one (Gabriel) hasn’t even scored yet. With Tomiyasu playing a more regular role in our XI, with his surprisingly fluid in-box movement, I can only see our players getting more space and more chance to turn that into shots — and hopefully goals. I’d be willing to bet on Jesus’ return creating a lot of near misses for himself as well, as one major criticism of Eddie I have is his tendency to ‘shut off’ on the second bounces in the area — ironically what many would assume him to be excellent at. A key example vs Spurs, where he almost shrugs as the ball bounces in front of him, sums this up, and I’m sure Jesus will a vital cog for us upping our chaos factor in the space in front of the keeper. Just don’t expect any shots on target.
Secondarily, I think a clearer definition of player roles is due, as we find out more about player strengths. Kai’s first-man and conflict-averse role seems locked up, but Rice, Saliba, Martinelli, and Tomiyasu are all rather fluid right now. I don’t think this is bad thing, it improves flexibility in approach, but personally I feel Rice and Saliba especially are being fairly underutilised given their physical strengths. Rice as a central arriver would be an interesting alternate given his acceleration and overall power, as would Saliba swapping with Kai occasionally to allow for repeats of his goal vs Brentford last season (front post loopy flick over our new number 1), whilst also affording our space-invader Havertz to, well, invade the space we so consistently earn in the middle.
Finally, with an underwhelmingly safe option, I would not expect us to move from the inswinger bias, barring another post-xmas drop-off as we play teams for a second time. Whilst the short corner offers us a smarter alternative to block breaking, it also leaves us quite heavily without our transition-control behemoths. With defence being the word of the day (season?) for Arsenal this time round, avoiding any compromises on this seems most likely — unless we really can’t figure out how to create anything in open play anymore.
For game-specifc predictons over the next 5 or so, to really embarrass myself:
- Luton are slightly better than Burnley and a bunch better than Sheffield Utd from corner situations on xG per shot, per Understat (caveats galore here, but we work with what we have). I’d assume we’ll have a bit more trouble than we did with the others, but would be confident of a Martinelli/Tomiyasu charge into the 6 yard box here: we will likely rack up corners, and Luton’s counter presence is minimal, allowing one of our edge players the room to commit.
- Looking at Wolves now, José Sá has some of the best cross stopping numbers in the the top 5 leagues per fbref, so outswingers here would fit with our current strategy. A strong counter threat means shorts are unlikely unless we nail these first-time crosses from wide, but I wouldn’t expect much here given how relatively poor we’ve been at this type so far. Kai’s usefulness here will be slightly limited too as a result, so it may be wise for us to load the box edge to ensure we don’t fall foul of Gary O’Neil again, as Wolves have some fantastic carriers.
- Aston Villa are likely the best defensive corner side we’ll face, and have the best collector for crosses in Emi Martinez. Short corners with a low box commitment would be my expectation here, given the prowess of Watkins, Diaby, Bailey and co. to exploit space. I will caveat with a suggestion that front post corners may also be our risk averse strategy, with Kai/Gabriel winning these typically, and worst-case scenario really being a Saka throw-in, but I like the idea of dribbling towards the box against Villa much more.
- PSV were hilariously incompetent before, and I expect that to continue. I can see us creating a big chance or two if they remain as totally unphased by the size differential as last time, and will expect to see us going deeper this time round following a handful or short/front post corners last time.
- Brighton will be a horrific game of football for the neutral and especially for Arsenal fans. Roberto de Zerbi is a wolf in sheeps clothing in football aesthetics, and his style is horrendous to watch outside of 30 second Twitter clips. I’m genuinely expecting about 2 corners all game here — could see us going short with an early ST peel-off forward after Brighton starve us of the ball for 45 minutes in the name of ‘control’. I’m unsure if this is helpful, but man I despise Brighton.
It’s difficult to end ~5k words on corner strategy in a way that really adds anything. So.
TLDR: We’re pretty damn good at corners, and we’ve got potential to be even better. Kai Havertz, Declan Rice, William Saliba, Gabriel (especially Gabriel), Takehiro Tomiyasu is a beefy box of lads — don’t expect us to be forgetting that fact any time soon.
I will eventually get round to doing a defensive one of these, once we have enough to work with. A joyfully smug line to write.