Seeing Yanited fans losing their minds over losing to us on two set pieces is priceless. I'd rather lose and take corners like men than that weird arsenal nonsenseWhat will their kids think— cants (@cantseyy) December 4, 2024
Unfortunately when Mikel said post-match that “we lost two critical defenders” makes me a bit less optimistic. Now I’m just praying it won’t be too serious/long for either.
Four of United’s five shots were from set pieces. They just weren’t very good at them. A little worried about how meh we’ve been in attack from open play.
Had the same thought earlier today. Too much dependence on set pieces, as much as we all appreciate them. We need more diversity in how we score. But I have a hunch that with fit and in form Ode+Saka that we can develop that.
I'm not that worried yet. There needs to be some more improvement, sure, but 13 or 14 corner kicks we generated are evidence we're attacking. They don't occur in a vacuum.
Was different against United who parked the bus, last week against WHU we had a Gabi headed goal, a Saka goal from open play with a cross, a Saka penalty that Ode put away, a Kai goal from an immaculate through ball and then a penalty from a set piece foul. But the last few games we haven't had issues creating and our set piece goals came from shots at goal from open play. Its not like we are Stoke'ing our way to victory here. We are building up shots at goal in open play, and getting set pieces as a consolation then scoring from them.
I think this is Arteta's response to the horseshoe of death, opponents sit deep and refuse to be broken down, so pepper them with a dozen corners and be so good at them that one or two get in. Didn't work against Inter but has worked in the league.
Could be. And the disparagement that seems to be coming at us for being so corner dominant or "Set Piece FC" is kinda ridiculous. One of Citeh's key success factors in recent years has been rotational fouling. Surely a heavy volume of corners (and goals from) is better football karma than a master plan for fouling.
It's also funny because we aren't generating more opportunities from set pieces than other teams, we're just converting them at a much higher rate. https://fbref.com/en/comps/9/Premier-League-Stats If you scroll to Squad Goal and Shot Creation, we're tied for 3rd in shots created from dead ball situations (33), but we're more than double everyone else in goals scored from dead ball situations (9 v. Forest and Brentford's 4). Having a team full of Big Lads helps you score from set pieces. Who knew?
This is the new celebration police. Any other club would be praised, have to find a reason to hate on Arsenal.
If you're a regular Arsecast listener, I recommend you stick around for the hidden bit at the end of today's show. It's very simple but one of his better ones methinks. And without spoiling it, I'll just say it's got a Jaws theme.
Scott addresses the silly Stoke comparison... https://www.cannonstats.com/p/arsenal-vs-manchester-united-the
Yup. My memory of Stoke is thankfully fading, but the barely lasting impressions were of nastly tackles, old-fashioned Route 1, set piece goals, and most notably Rory Delap throws. Glanced at Scott's stats and analysis. Our % of goals from set pieces is about half of what Stoke's was. But it's also interesting to see that for us, the share of these goals has been increasing significantly for the 3 most recent seasons: 17%, 22%, 25%. And I suppose that is what fans & pundits are picking up on. Maybe they're over-weighting this trend a bit, but seems still valid to highlight how the importance of set pieces has been trending up. One other part of Scott's stats that I thought interesting were the attacking stats and how we were generally right about on our team average for the season, except for Deep Touches & Progressive Passes. Deep Touches: is it considered a maybe good thing to have lower deep touches if your field tilt is relatively high? Progressive Passes: obviously it would've been good if this had been a lot higher. Here's a snip from his article (hope he doesn't mind):
There's a rather obvious answer to this. More and more teams aren't "playing open" against us. We're seeing many more low and mid blocks. More difficult to create open play chances when that happens but if you're at least trying to attack---which we are---you end up with more corner kicks and (hopefully) free kick set pieces.
All I know is that back in the olden days at The Globe, @leepyswetr and I used to do shots when Arsenal scored from a set piece, it wasn't a very common occurrence, this season we'd be more blitzed than normal.
Other teams fans calling us Stoke FC because we are winning on corners, we are absolutely in their heads atm. Can't wait for us to batter a few teams 4/5 goals from open play, then what does the next "insult" become. Love the salty Man U fans right now. Salty City fans right now are great too. Going to be better when they have their titles stripped off them.
The same people who used to give us stick for being "soft" on set pieces and easy to push around. Their current whinging makes me giggle.