I don’t have any data, but besides Saliba’s goal vs Burnley I can’t remember when was the last time we scored from set piece. Many times Saka and Martinelli corners are cleared on the first post which is frustrating.
I have heard on some local tv praise for Arsenal’s set pieces and now read Kompany saying something similar about them being the best at it.
Based purely on eye test, I find West Ham way more dangerous. Ward-Prowse is perhaps the best set piece specialist and Soucek, Antonio, Zouma etc are real aerial threat.
Which team you find best in set pieces?
I don’t know what you expect from a set piece specialist. Scoring every second corner or freekick of sorts? These set pieces have a low percentage of actually turning into goals. If generating many corners and other set pieces and scoring from them is what makes us specialists, then we’re fucking amazing at it. Let’s say each corner is worth 0.01 xg on average. Then 10 corners would only amount to a 10% chance of scoring a goal. Scoring consistenlty from that is incredible.
Not that, but there have been games where Saka/Martinelli would hit 5 times the man at the first post, without any Arsenal player near the guy making the clearance. That has just been frustrating at times, so I was just wondering if this is based on player’s individual ability or based on bad coordination/communication…
They hit the first man often because they’re driving flat corners with pace into that front post area, there’s an extremely high threshold but when it comes off you have an unstoppable close range header.