“Arsenal are bad at defending set pieces.” « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
One of our readers wrote a comment which got me thinking. And I would like to thank him for giving me some inspiration. And please don’t see this as some kind of attack, as this is certainly not the case. It just was the starting point of doing some research.
He said: “Set-pieces are just killing arsenal’s defence. Don’t know why it happens but every time we concede a corner or free kick, its nerve wrecking, and most of our goals are going in thru set pieces.”
And at first I was nodding my head in agreement. And then I thought… is this really so?
So I went on a little investigation and so I took all the goals we conceded so far and I just give you the list of the goals we conceded so far this season and also how they happened. I took all the competitive goals we played so far this season and looked at all the goals we conceded.
So here comes a rather depressing list:
- Liverpool : open play
- Blackburn: open play
- Bolton : open play
- Sunderland: open play (after a corner had been hooked away and in extra extra time)
- Tottenham : open play
- WBA: open play
- Partizan Belgrade: penalty
- Chelsea: open play and direct free kick
- Birmingham : open play
- Shakhtar : open play
- Shakhtar: free kick headed in own goal + open play
- Newcastle: free kick headed in
- Everton: corner bundled in
- Tottenham : open play, penalty, free kick headed in
- Braga: open play, open play
- Aston Villa : open play, corner headed in
So what we have is goals from open play, penalties and corners and free kicks leading to a goal. But how many of them? Let us count.
- OPEN PLAY: 14 (from 22 goals in total) or 63 %
- PENALTY: 2 (from 22 goals in total) 9%
- DIRECT FREE KICK: 1 (from 22 goals in total) 4,5%
- CORNER/FREE KICK turned in to a goal : 5 (from 22 goals in total) 23%
I think we can leave the penalties and the direct free kicks out of this as they are more or less not directly to blame on something or someone.
But if we look at the goals we conceded from corners and free kicks they contain only 23% of the total we let in. So the assumption that we concede most of our goals from corners and free kicks is just totally wrong. Just every 5th goal we let in comes from such a standard situation.
And if we compare this with the games we played so far in total (which is 23 games) we can see that we let in less than one goal per game. For those who like numbers we concede 0,95 goals per game to be exact. And most of them in open play.
So in fact statistically it only is every fifth game we concede a goal from a corner/free kick that is somehow headed in or forced over the line. So our dear fan who is suffering from a nervous breakdown every corner or free kick we concede should just relax a bit more. It is not the end of the world when face a free kick or a corner.
And you will not hear me say that we don’t concede any goals from those situations, but as I have just shown there is a greater chance that we concede a goal in open play.
And I must say that after my little research I must admit that these numbers are even surprising to me. Even I have been a believer of the general football chatter that we cannot defend set pieces. Maybe this is another example of how we are developing our team. I really would be grateful if there is someone out there who knows how this has been going in the last seasons. To see if we could find if we are improving or if we are going backwards?
I have the feeling after seeing these numbers that we have improved, but then again it might just be that I just have a false image on this. Just as I believed, and our reader also believed, I think many of us had the wrong feeling about conceding goals.
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