When Nicolas Jover signed up for an online set-piece course last summer, the tutors initially thought it was a prank.
Despite transforming Arsenal’s set-piece play over the past three years in his role as a coach dedicated to that specific area of the game — he has turned them into one of Europe’s best at dead-ball situations — Jover has always wanted to learn.
Since Mikel Arteta brought him to Arsenal in the summer of 2021, they have been the Premier League’s best team at profiting from attacking corners, whichever way you measure it. Their total of 44 goals from them in that period is five more than that of the next most successful team by the metric, Liverpool.
It is not just a case of them scoring more because they take more corners than most teams, either. When accounting for equal opportunity to deliver from a dead-ball situation, Arsenal have scored 6.1 goals per 100 corners, the most efficient rate in the Premier League since 2021-22.
Occasionally, Arsenal use short corners but their stock delivery is an inswinger, from either side, targeting the six-yard box.
This routine created big goals twice in seven days recently, first to win the north London derby at Tottenham Hotspur, then to take the lead at the Etihad Stadium against Manchester City, where they drew 2-2 on Sunday.
Both times, Bukayo Saka provided the assist for central defender Gabriel to head in. City had a warning shot eight minutes before the second of those goals, when Arsenal ran the routine for the first time and Gabriel headed wide.
It begged the question: can you stop Arsenal at corners — and if you can, how?
There is no silver bullet.
Arsenal have played 24 different Premier League opponents since Jover’s arrival and scored from a corner against 19 of them. Of the remaining five, three were only in the top flight for one season (Luton Town, Norwich City and Watford) and a fourth, Leeds United, were relegated in 2023 after two years back in the division.
Liverpool are the only team to face Arsenal every season since 2021-22 and prevent them scoring from corners.
That is partially because Liverpool do not concede many goals, period. Their high pressing under Jurgen Klopp meant they defended less in a low block, and their possession play was good enough to control games.
Liverpool have only allowed 17 corners in the clubs’ past six Premier League meetings — 2.8 per game. Five corners per match is the target threshold to keep Arsenal under. There have only been 11 Premier League games since 2021-22 where Arsenal have failed to register a shot from a corner, and they never had more than five in those fixtures.
Assessing expected goals from corners in the Jover era, Arsenal’s chance creation is, naturally, linear to corner frequency. But they are particularly clinical the more corners they have. Considering the consistency of their delivery types and runs, it shows us that Arsenal will get it right, eventually.
|
Match corners
|
xG/game
|
Goals/game
|
|---|---|---|
|
0.53
|
0.69
|
|
|
0.37
|
0.57
|
|
|
0.16
|
0.14
|
Last season, they needed 12 corners to score against Manchester United in a 3-1 home victory. Their repeated targeting of the back post paid off with Declan Rice’s stoppage-time winner.
At times, Arsenal tweak their routines mid-game in response to the opposition’s setup. Such variety and constant evolution make them hard to stop. This season, they have started targeting the back post more, whereas in 2023-24 they hit more inswingers to the near post.
That might be a change in tactic or a specific approach against their early-season opponents — Arsenal scored back-post corner goals last season against Manchester United, Crystal Palace and West Ham United.
One of Arsenal’s signature corner moves was Ben White marking the opposition goalkeeper. This season, Arsenal have tweaked their approach, because the Premier League sharpened its focus on blocking rules. Rather than White’s starting position being right on the ’keeper, Arsenal have been trying to crowd the space in front of him.
In that 1-0 win against Tottenham this month, White and William Saliba (highlighted below by the red dots) start a short distance away from Guglielmo Vicario.
As Saka takes the corner, they move towards the goalkeeper. This also drags their markers, James Maddison and Micky van de Ven, closer to Vicario, who ends up pinned and prevented from reaching the ball.
Saka’s trademark inswinger targets the six-yard box…
… and Gabriel, unopposed, heads past Vicario, who is crowded out.
Teams have to be mindful not to crowd the goalkeeper with their own man-markers, while also forcing Arsenal’s blockers away from him — protecting the ’keeper is essential to stopping Arsenal from scoring from corners.
Opposing sides fare better when they have an active goalkeeper who can catch or punch, which is why Liverpool, with Alisson, have had success.
They can position their zonal defenders more aggressively, giving Alisson space to attack the cross, and having a higher zonal line means teams can layer zonal markers. That means if a blocker loses his runner, a zonal marker is better placed to disrupt them.
Another point of consideration is dealing with Gabriel.
The Brazilian centre-back has scored 12 of Arsenal’s 44 goals from corners (27 per cent) in the Premier League since 2021-22, including important ones away to Chelsea, Tottenham and City.
A common defensive approach is to use your best header of the ball zonally — if Gabriel is man-marked by the opposition’s best header, they are easier to drag away. With Arsenal’s physicality and ability on set pieces, they have other options to target in Saliba and Kai Havertz.
Is double-teaming Gabriel worth a try? Maybe. However, Arsenal have had success in using short corners with players stationed outside of the penalty area. Doubling-up means losing a zonal marker, which could make things worse.
On the other hand, leaving Gabriel free and defending completely zonally isn’t ideal either, considering his leaping and heading abilities. This way, Gabriel would be attacking the ball on the run, an added advantage against zonal defenders jumping from a standing position.
The profile of the blocker matters. Some teams use smaller, more agile players, meaning their colleagues who are better in the air can be zonal.
Brighton are one example.
Last season, Arsenal produced four shots directly (excluding rebounds and second-phase shots) from seven corners in their 3-0 away win at the Amex Stadium — their most direct corner shots in a single Premier League game in Jover’s time. All four were by Gabriel (6ft 3in/190cm), who is almost a foot taller than his marker here, the 5ft 4in Tariq Lamptey.
Gabriel, from initial back-post positions, repeatedly escaped Lamptey and got clear jumps above Brighton’s zonal markers, as Saliba and Jorginho worked to pin Lewis Dunk and Joao Pedro.
Here, from a Rice inswinger, Gabriel gets the first contact at the back post. His header hits team-mate Havertz, who is offside.
City allowed a similar height disadvantage on Sunday with Jeremy Doku (5ft 8in) as Gabriel’s blocker.
After Gabriel escaped him and headed wide from the first corner mentioned above, City switched Doku with the 6ft tall Kyle Walker. He used the bizarre tactic of repeatedly poking Gabriel in the chest before the corner was taken, to know where the centre-back was while he watched Saka play the ball in.
Walker lost track of Gabriel too, though, and Arsenal’s pinning of zonal markers and goalkeeper Ederson meant he had a relatively unchallenged header just a few yards out.
Using physically inferior players as blockers is not necessarily a recipe for disaster. City used an almost identical setup last season in the same Arsenal fixture. Bernardo Silva (5ft 8in), then Rico Lewis (5ft 7in), had turns as Gabriel’s blocker, and Arsenal had no first contacts from their four corners.
Ederson caught the first corner, under pressure from Gabriel, Saliba and Havertz, and City’s near-post zonal markers cleared the other three.
Likewise, there are examples of teams having issues when they match up their centre-backs against Arsenal’s. That was Tottenham’s approach the previous weekend — Van de Ven marked Saliba and Cristian Romero had to cover Gabriel.
The drawback of this is who then fulfils the zonal roles. Rodrigo Bentancur and Dominic Solanke were left as Tottenham’s central zonal markers, and though both are tall enough for the job, neither is as aerially accomplished or has the defensive instincts of their centre-back colleagues.
As soon as Romero lost Gabriel, the Argentina international was out of the game. The position Gabriel scored from is where Bentancur had stood, but he then stepped forward to try to clear the corner, misreading the flight of the ball.
Newcastle United, back in February, went with a similar approach at the Emirates and suffered the same outcome.
On Arsenal’s third corner in the game’s first 17 minutes, they scored the opening goal.
Here, Newcastle have four zonal markers across the six-yard box, Anthony Gordon defending the short corner, and five man-markers, which includes centre-backs Fabian Schar and Sven Botman tracking Gabriel and Havertz from back-post positions.
Arsenal’s near-post decoy, White, attracted Newcastle’s zonal front two, Miguel Almiron and Lewis Miley. The latter started off in the spot that Gabriel would make his header from, while Saliba’s pinning of Sean Longstaff ensured his team-mate did so uncontested.
That game was an example of Arsenal’s ability to make minor tweaks, adjusting White’s role after the first corner.
They scored a second corner goal after half-time. It was another near-post delivery, but this time headed in by the 6ft 2in Jakub Kiwior. He made the same far-to-near post runs in the first half, which had been the decoy for Gabriel.
There is no optimal blocker profile. A more physical defender should stop Gabriel, Saliba or Havertz from getting a clean run, but they are also better placed to jump against them.
Teams have to decide if they want to try to prevent the duel happening or accept it will and attempt to win it when it does.
Opponents should be more physical and, within the rules, grapple with Arsenal’s players better. This does risk conceding a penalty but Arsenal’s set-piece success is built on blocking zonal markers and the goalkeeper. Teams have to fight fire with fire.
Aston Villa and Brentford demonstrated good examples of this when they went to the Emirates last season. Both used a mix of zonal and man-markers in their six-yard box. Mads Roerslev’s holding of Saliba, and Vitaly Janelt’s marking of White, offered goalkeeper Mark Flekken more protection.
Brentford made the first contact at seven of 10 Arsenal corners that day, but still needed a goal-line clearance from Janelt to keep out a Gabriel header from the scenario above — as discussed previously, give up too many corners and chances are Arsenal will eventually make it count.
Whereas Brentford used a midfielder and wing-back, keeping two of their centre-backs as zonal markers with Mathias Jorgensen marking Gabriel, Villa matched Arsenal’s centre-backs with theirs. Here, Pau Torres, Ezri Konsa and Youri Tielemans ensure Saliba, Gabriel and Havertz can’t wriggle free or jump.
Ollie Watkins and Nicolo Zaniolo are also holding Leandro Trossard (front post) and Gabriel Jesus (corner of the six-yard box).
The delivery sails through untouched and goes out for a goal kick, which is a collectors’ item in Arsenal’s corner library.
In terms of schemes, a hybrid approach is the way to go.
In 2024, Arsenal have exploited heavy zonal or man-marking setups.
The 5-0 home win against Palace in January had the visitors defending with seven man-markers. Eberechi Eze went out against the short option, while Joachim Andersen and Jean-Philippe Mateta were the two zonal defenders (the white dots below).
Arsenal had Jesus and Gabriel (yellow dot in the next grab) near the penalty spot, with White (red) on goalkeeper Dean Henderson, Trossard and Saliba at the back post and Havertz (out of frame) by the far edge of the penalty area.
Arsenal’s movement manipulated Palace’s man-marking to create space towards the back post for Gabriel and Havertz.
As Rice takes the corner, Saliba (white) moves towards the near post and Trossard (red) gets closer to Andersen…
…to block Palace’s central zonal defender. Meanwhile, Jesus (white) makes another dummy run towards the near post. This vacates the back-post zone for Gabriel and Havertz (yellow) to attack.
White is pinning Henderson, preventing him from defending Rice’s inswinger…
…which finds Gabriel’s towards the back post.
Here for the second Arsenal goal on Sunday, City’s defensive setup is zone-oriented, with Savinho defending the short corner, Walker man-marking Gabriel as detailed earlier, and eight zonal defenders around the six-yard area. Four of these are positioned at the near post, with Ruben Dias and Manuel Akanji central and Bernardo and Josko Gvardiol at the back post.
This meant Arsenal had a five-versus-two at the latter, with Gabriel up against Walker out by the penalty spot.
Thomas Partey and Riccardo Calafiori make runs to block Dias and Gvardiol. Simultaneously, Gabriel Martinelli and Saliba get close to Ederson and prevent him dealing with the cross.
Havertz (yellow) holds his position, waiting to make a late run, while Gabriel feints past Walker to attack the back post, which is where Saka is directing the corner.
Gabriel meets the cross and heads in. The 6ft 4in Havertz is right behind him, one-v-one against Bernardo, who as mentioned earlier is eight inches shorter than that — Arsenal players were queuing up to score this goal.
West Ham found the flaws of a purely zonal defensive approach in February.
It took Arsenal six corners but, from a Rice back-post inswinger, Kiwior moved early to pin Nayef Aguerd, who was one of the deeper zonal markers. This allowed Saliba to run from behind Kiwior and outjump Edson Alvarez to head in the opening goal.
Teams can build on Porto’s approach in their Champions League last-16 tie against Arsenal last season.
Porto’s hybrid scheme had zonal players defending the near post (blue), man-markers towards the far, and a player near the penalty spot (white).
On short corners, one of the man-markers changed roles, moving to a setup which had two zonal defenders towards the near post (blue), a player near the penalty spot (white) to protect against late runs from outside the box, and two players out to defend the short corner (yellow).
In the first leg, Arsenal only managed two goal attempts from 10 corners, but the most interesting routine was blown up because of a foul.
Here, Porto are defending against the short corner as explained above, but Arsenal create a two-v-one overload against the man on the penalty spot (white) using runners from beyond the 18-yard box.
Saka goes first, which attracts that player…
…and then Trossard darts towards the back post, with his team-mates around the six-yard area vacating that zone.
Rice targets the Belgian with the corner…
…but he shoots over.
In the return leg at the Emirates, Arsenal managed one shot from nine corners, and that was when they played it short.
Porto tweaked their setup by moving one of the three zonal defenders towards the near post (blue) a couple of yards forward (white) to add more protection against the threat of late runners, while man-marking at the back post was maintained.
Against Arsenal, the optimal defensive corner setup depends on the profiles of the players available to you, but Porto’s scheme, Villa/Brentford’s holding and Liverpool’s ability to limit the number of corners conceded are details teams should build on.
The introduction of different tweaks will also depend on the analysis of Arsenal’s recent corners.
Arteta, Jover and the staff will surely find new routines too.
Arsenal are close to unstoppable from corners. Will anyone find the answers?
