Corners

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No Kane No Gain

No Kane No Gain

Well-Known Member
Jun 2, 2011
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Just a little stat that I worked out the otherday as I know we all feel we aren't good enough at set pieces.

We had 284 corners last season, the second highest number of corners of the Premier League teams with 7 goals coming from them which is 1 goal from every 40.6 corners. On the other side we conceded 5 goals from 181 corners won by our opponents at 36.2.

I must say that defensively, it's not as bad as I was expecting but when you look at the circumstances of the ones conceded at home against United and Wolves it's still poor and when you look at the other three occasions we conceded, they had less than 5 corners the entire game.

We definitely need to improve our threat from attacking corners and set pieces as a priority though. When teams are happy to stand off against you, set pieces can provide invaluable breakthroughs that open up the opposition. Our top 5 corner counts came against Villa away(19), West Brom home(14), QPR away(13), Stoke home(13) and Stoke away(12). You might notice that we only got one win amongst those games and we didn't score from any of the 71 corners generated.

In conclusion: SORT IT OUT 'ARRY <grr>

Edit: Breakdown of the games we scored from corners in:

1-5 City (h) Scorer: Kaboul, Taker: VDV
2-1 Wigan (a) Scorer: Bale, Taker: Modric
2-0 Villa (h) Scorer: Adebayor, Taker: VDV, note - ball was half cleared when Bale knocked the ball back in to Ade
3-0 Bolton (h) Scorers: Bale & Defoe, Taker: Modric x2, note - Defoe's goal was as a result of a flick on by Bale from Modric's corner
3-1 Swansea (h) Scorer: Adebayor Taker: VDV
4-1 Bolton (a) Scorer: Modric, Taker: VDV note - corner cut back by VDV for Modric to smash in a Worldy
 
do you not sometimes think that there is only so much a manager can do?

surely players must take responsibility with the finer details..

i.e..running in too late to meet a cross
getting the ball over the first man
spinning of your marker efficently.

those teams that do score dont do anything diffrent they just do it better.

im sure Harry tells them about movement and running off players etc...wether they have the concentration and know how of executing it efficently is another thing...i bet they score from more corners in training than they do in matches.

im blaming the players approach.
 
I think we learned that VDV cannot and should not take corners.

Surely, Bale would be better than him, anyway? Isn't it supposed to be his job to cross the ball? Or Modric, even?
 
vdv should be in the box to receive the corner's he was the only one of our player's to score from one,if i remember correctly
 
You only have to look at who's good in the air. Take last season, Ade yes, Bale has got on the end of one or two, after that its CB's, we have the worst aerial attacking threat in the league...somehow! and must be the easiest team to defend against. That is the problem, criticising the 'takers' is wrong, you cannot expect any corner taker to drop it consistantly on a sixpence, on the same couple of players bonces.
 
well vertonghen has scored 23 goals in 155 games for Ajax, as a defender. That's bloody impressive. to me that would suggest that he's an aerial threat from set pieces? if that's the case, that will help massively. that's actually a great record for a defender.

Our main issue is the amount that are wasted at the near post. We've all mentioned how we don't think that we're choosing the right players for corners, but there was something else i started to notice at the end of the season, after our set piece discussions and concerns. - The lack of grass around the outside of the pitch. sounds daft, but WHL's a bloody joke.

For any one at WHL who's taking an outswinging corner to avoid the keeper, their run up is crap. they get 1-2 steps on a hard surface, followed by 1 step onto soft grass, before striking the ball. there's no clear run up where the body can adjust to the correct position to strike the ball sweetly. this might sound ridiculous, but look at how much there is at Old trafford, for example. The grass at the corner makes an easy run up for an inswinging or an outswinging corner. I've actually dealt with this at a low level of football and it's really off putting as you feel that you might slip on the harder surface.

Perhaps this is a reason that our goal ratio is awful. 18 homes games with this in mind, is bound to make a difference.
 
We are much better at defending them than we used to be. The amount on last minute goals, that would lose us games, from corners a few seasons back...Painful.


The fact the we are of little threat from corners is telling. I blame Harry and co for the attitude of the players.

It's his job to instil the right mentality to them, whether by inspiring them or kicking them up the backside when we lose in silly ways.


Do you think that SAF would have a corner conversion stat like that for too long? He'd soon whip it out of the players and get them to make the right choices when they get chances.

In conclusion: SORT IT OUT 'ARRY <grr> indeed.
 
Hoddle Is A God said:
I think we learned that VDV cannot and should not take corners.

Surely, Bale would be better than him, anyway? Isn't it supposed to be his job to cross the ball? Or Modric, even?
Click to expand...

I'll work out who took the corners we scored from, if you want but I have a feeling VDV was streets ahead and Bale scored atleast two of them, I think as well as hitting the bar against Chelsea so I'd rather he was in the box. Modric seemed worse than VDV the times I've seen him take corners, plus he offers a good short option and is dangerous lurking around the box as we saw against Bolton.

Original Spurcat said:
Do you have the stats to show how this compares with other sides ??
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not as I worked it out myself for ours. The only comparable stats I've seen are for goals from set pieces as a whole where City and Blackburn topped with 19 and United closely followed with 18 and we were in the bottom half on 9, the average being 12.05.
 
notsosmartspur said:
You only have to look at who's good in the air. Take last season, Ade yes, Bale has got on the end of one or two, after that its CB's, we have the worst aerial attacking threat in the league...somehow! and must be the easiest team to defend against. That is the problem, criticising the 'takers' is wrong, you cannot expect any corner taker to drop it consistantly on the same few players bonces.
Click to expand...

Bale was really good for us in the air, whisper it quietly around him but he reminds me of Ronaldo, the way he darts to the near post at corners. He'll need to add a bit of variety to his runs but he adds some much needed height to our attacking line.



I'll update the thread now to add a bit more of a breakdown on our goals scored.
 
I regularly sat and counted the number of times that VDV failed to beat the first defender. It was shocking and utterly unacceptable.
 
Hoddle Is A God said:
I think we learned that VDV cannot and should not take corners.
Click to expand...

...and from that, I've learned you're not very observant at all, VdV put some of the best corners anyone could put over last season, not having anyone half decent to attack aerially is our problem. Yes, a number didn't clear the first man....so what, watch other teams...same thing happens.
 
We had a similar discussion mid-season as I recall and I still think that we should start looking at Benny as a corner taker, arguably either side but certainly from the right side.

For whatever reason, VDV, Mods and (less frequently) Bale are all inconsistent in their delivery - and if that bit isn't right then we could have the best finishers in the world and still wouldn't get many goals!!
 
For an away team to get 19 corners as we apparantly did at Villa, is extroadinary. The average number of corners in a game is 11 or 12 for both sides, so for us to get 19 as an away side is unusual to say the least.
 
Original Spurcat said:
For an away team to get 19 corners as we apparantly did at Villa, is extroadinary. The average number of corners in a game is 11 or 12 for both sides, so for us to get 19 as an away side is unusual to say the least.
Click to expand...

I actually missed that game so I've not seen how on Earth it happened, especially as we went down to 10 men. On the otherside of things we only managed 4 corners to Sunderland's 11 in the away game we dominated in nearly every otherway.
 
I think our corner takers are decidedly shoddy when you consider their considerably passing talent in open play, quite why the likes of VdV and Modric don't beat the first man so often is beyond me. Bale offers a great threat coming in near post at pace though, we need to exploit that more often for me both as a diversion and as an actual threat. We've missed Dawson badly from ariel set pieces as well IMO, both offensively and defensively. It's the area of our game which I think most people agree needs the most work, because as a top 4 club we need to be doing better. I think we've been a bit more solid defensively this season (although it's still 'heart in mouth' time for every corner, cross and free kick, both direct and indirect) but offensively we remain well under par.
 
Well, so far, I can see no-one bar myself that thinks we've got too many players that are just crap in the air, and all the crossing in the world isn't going to change that.
 
notsosmartspur said:
Well, so far, I can see no-one bar myself that thinks we've got too many players that are just crap in the air, and all the crossing in the world isn't going to change that.
Click to expand...

Well there is that too - we do have a very limited ariel presence. We don't really have anyone in and around our first team who is consistently strong in the air offensively and defensively, someone you'd back to the hilt to win the ball every time in the air. Kaboul has been good at times this year, but we've definitely missed Dawson in that respect I feel. Vertonghen could go some way towards fixing this if/when we eventually get him, he got 10 in 42 last year, admittedly in the Dutch league but that's still a pretty decent return for a defender. But we could have the best headers of the ball in the world and it wouldn't matter if the corners and free kicks don't reach them.
 
I think we can go overboard on these dissections. Subjectively I thought VDV improved his corners in the last few games of the season, so maybe they have been working on them.

I think the main problem with corners is not putting the ball in, it is having a player who can capitalise on it in the middle.

If we had a Joe Jordan or an Alan Gilzean,or currently a Drogba then I have no doubt our success rate would be improved. It's difficult to teach something that rely's, I believe, to a large extent on instinct. If that wasn't the case then we could simply teach someone to be the new Jimmy Greaves or the new Ledley King. This is why strikers cost such a lot of money.
 
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