Arsenal lead the Premier League for set-piece goals this season. In fact, so potent are the Gunners from deal-ball situations, that their fans have adopted the name 'Set Piece FC' and created a mutual in honor of Nicolas Jover, the man masterminding them.
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00:00Hello, ho, ho everybody. It's Christmas, I guess. Adam Cleary here from 442 and I don't
00:08know if you've heard about this, but Arsenal are very good at set pieces. And the man behind
00:13all of that, we are told, is this man here. One Nicholas Jover. He's never kicked a ball
00:18in his life, not professionally. He's a nerd with a laptop. But you know what? So am I.
00:25And he might well be the man single-handedly keeping Arsenal in the title race. And that
00:31is outrageous hyperbole. Yes, I already regret saying it, but it is going to make for a good
00:36video.
00:37Now first off, very, very quickly, some housekeeping. I've seen the messages, I've got all the
00:42comments, where are the videos, Adam? Why aren't you posting as much? It's Christmas
00:46and loads of other people use the studio and they're all trying to do all that fun product
00:50stuff. So here I am, right before I go to Five Aside on a Thursday night, after everyone
00:55else has gone home, doing this for you. And we've got a lot of fun stuff planned for you
00:59over Christmas, so just bear with us. But anyway, yes, this is Arsenal, which you are
01:03no doubt familiar with if you support Arsenal. And no real interesting point here, just not
01:09going to use the subitio table much in this video, so just reminding you it's there.
01:13Now this is an image you will have seen plenty of times by now. Arsenal are getting ready
01:17for a corner. They've grossly overloaded the back post. It's delivered as an in-swinger
01:22and it goes in. It is proving to be about as hard to defend as getting caught tugging
01:26yourself off on public transport, but it keeps happening and that is because of Nikolas Jover.
01:31He never really played the game, not at this or any other level. He was a video analyst
01:35at Montpellier in his youth. Then he wound up at Brentford. Remember me saying Brentford?
01:40Then he went to Man City where he met Mikael Arteta and then he followed him to Arsenal.
01:43And actually, I'm just going to use the subitio pitch for a second because at the start of
01:46the season, like two seasons ago, these were some of the players you regularly saw featured
01:51for Arsenal. Alexander Zinchenko, Emile Smith-Rowe, Gabriel Jesus, Kieran Tierney got a lot of
01:56minutes, Granit Xhaka as well, Rob Holding, remember him? And the one thing all these
02:00players have in common is that they're not very big and they're not very beefy.
02:04So one of the main things that Jover has helped to influence is this ability to exploit set
02:09pieces for goals. And now the Arsenal squad has a completely different physical makeup
02:13like Riccardo Calafiore has come in, Declan Rice has come in, Kai Havertz has come in,
02:17Mikel Mourinho, Ben White, even Durian Timber, who's not actually that tall, is still physically
02:22a hell of a specimen. He's got a great leap on him. He's excellent in the air.
02:25And now you've got Arsenal fans singing set piece FC. There's a fucking mural to him,
02:30a mural to a set piece coach and a data analyst. As I live and breathe.
02:36Deservedly so, because some numbers for you, Arsenal are the best at this in the world.
02:41The goal against Fulham last week took them to over 42 corner goals in the Premier League
02:46since the summer of 2021, when he joined. Eight more than the next nearest team and
02:52loads more than pretty much everybody else. This season, they're already topped with seven,
02:56including two against Man Utd before, like it's not a statistical anomaly.
03:00It's something they're working on over and over and over again and seeing the rewards of.
03:04So, and I presume this is why you actually clicked on the video,
03:06let's discuss what it is they're working on and why that's so good.
03:10Now, they do always tend to follow the same core principles which are about to discuss,
03:14but like all great things, they come in a few different flavours that are tailored
03:18based on the opposition or the personnel available. But what is consistent,
03:21the key thing to note is A, the delivery and B, the roles of everyone involved.
03:26Now, this right here is your prime example. Arsenal set up with two men on the edge of the box,
03:32one runner around the penalty spot, then everybody else is gathered in a big amorphous blob,
03:37usually at the far post, but sometimes at the front. Now, here is what that looks like against
03:42West Ham, a team who almost exclusively defend man to man. So, all the really big lads in there
03:47have someone assigned to them, that's Havert, Saliba, Calafiore, and that is Antonio, I think.
03:53Get well soon, buddy, genuinely, from everybody here at 442. He's sizing up Gabriel.
03:58Now, you'll notice Timber and Trossard are three in this equation. That's because they're the two
04:02smallest men in this equation. So, when West Ham were doing the planning during the week,
04:06they simply won't have assigned players to them. And that's no disrespect to Leandro Trossard,
04:10by the way, the guy's only one inch shorter than me, which I virtually never get to say.
04:15I wonder if that means I've got a chance with Anne Hathaway.
04:18One nil. Sorry. Trossard.
04:22Oh, I love you!
04:23Anyway, yes, I'll send that DM later. This is the exact same situation against Nottingham Forest,
04:28who, unlike West Ham, have a purely zonal marking system. So, you can see instead this time,
04:33absolutely nobody is marked, but the process and the setup is exactly the same.
04:37Now, in both of these, you will note that Gabriel is in amongst it,
04:41rather than being on the penalty spot assigned to one man trying to make the run.
04:46And that's one of the ways they tailor the set piece.
04:48Basically, what Arsenal will do is they will look at who is likely to be assigned to Gabriel and
04:53decide whether or not he has a clear physical advantage against them. If he does, like he's
04:58got a better leap or he's quicker or he's just smarter in those areas, they'll put him on the
05:02penalty spot. But if it's somebody who's really good at defending crosses or just an excellent
05:05man marker, they will stick him in amongst it. Like, case in point here, the North London Derby.
05:10Tottenham decided to stick Cristian Romero on Gabriel rather than Micky van der Ven. He was
05:15on Saliba. So, they were like, OK, clear physical advantage there. Bigger, stronger, better leap.
05:20Let's put him in that position. But then you go back to the Forest one, who've got
05:25big lads that decided it wasn't worth it.
05:27But regardless, my friends, where Gabriel is in this equation, he is always, if he's on the pitch,
05:33the main target of the cross. Everyone else, and this is determined by a signal from the taker,
05:39then rushes to either the near or the far post, trying to create a path for him.
05:43And the main idea behind this is pretty simple, that they'll all rush an area,
05:47create a path. He'll then get into that space. He's got a very nice, neat, clean header into
05:51the goal. But the reason you sort of congregate everyone in the six yard box is that if the
05:56delivery is not perfect or Gabriel doesn't beat his marker, you're creating absolute chaos in that
06:02scenario. The Man United example, when they nearly went ahead from just skimming off Xherxey's head,
06:06that's kind of like a plan B in that situation. If we don't win it cleanly,
06:10someone might win it messily. And if they do, well, we're in the six yard box, so
06:16goal's only there. Might just fall in. They all count. But that is fundamentally what makes these
06:21Arsenal set-piece ideas different from how everybody else does it. Because if you spread
06:24your players all over the box and you try and get the ball into that area, if you're even slightly
06:29off your intended target, nobody's going to win it. Bounces through, goes to somebody else. It's
06:34very, very inaccurate. But if everybody's in the same place and the delivery is to one man in that
06:39area, you've got a far bigger margin for error. I'll give you a textbook example of this, right?
06:45The other week, Arsenal played Ruben Amorim's Sporting Lisbon. How long ago does that feel?
06:50And they scored this. Now, Arsenal have obviously decided there is a physical advantage from
06:54Gabriel. And even looking at this still image, there absolutely is. So he goes on the penalty
06:59spot to run. And also, I should have mentioned that the reason they want to do that, if possible,
07:04is because if you've got a run on the situation, you get a much better leap. It's much easier to
07:08attack the ball than 10 players who are all standing still trying to fight for space.
07:12Now, you've got Odegaard and Saka on the edge of the box here. And the reason for that is
07:15they're like Arsenal's two best sort of passes and crosses of a ball in like tight situations.
07:21So if it does come out and they get pressed straight away, they're probably the most likely
07:25to be able to jink round somebody and put it back in. Like Declan Rice's deliveries are excellent,
07:29but he's not that guy. Now, Sporting are zonal here. So at the back post, they are already
07:34massively outnumbered. These two, maybe three players are all going to have to deal with
07:38Saliba, Partey, Havertz, Calafiore and Martinelli. And there's basically four lads at the near post
07:45who are just about to get immediately bypassed. Now, right, watch this. The arm goes up from
07:51Declan Rice and everyone knows what to do. That is the signal to flood the back post area and
07:57basically crush everybody into the centre. So now, once they've done that, not a single one of these
08:03players, Arsenal or Sporting, can get any further back cross than about this line here, leaving
08:10this bit of room, which is exactly where Gabriel, who correctly identified,
08:14has the physical advantage over the man who's marking him, is more or less free to get to.
08:19And if I'm making it sound like it's really simple and everybody should just do that,
08:23you can't. Like the amount of training and practice and preparation and everything that
08:26goes into this is near superhuman. Like Gabriel has to make that run exactly on time. The delivery
08:32has to be absolutely perfect. The coordination from all these other players to do the exact
08:38same thing at the exact same time. It's nigh on impossible to get right once and Arsenal are doing
08:42it every single week almost. And what I love so much about this goal, right, is Gabriel,
08:47great header, bullet straight into the net. If he'd mistimed that run, if he hadn't got there or
08:52he just missed his header, Kai Havertz, who didn't go in with the crush because they had meant to
08:57spare, will just tap that in. And obviously, on top of all of this talk about coordination and
09:02training and set piece routines and yada, yada, yada, you have to take a second to appreciate
09:06Gabriel as a footballer. Saliba fills in really, really well. I think you saw that in the Fulham
09:12game, like that positioning's really good, his design when the ball's great, but Gabriel stands
09:16out to me, little bit of a freak, little bit of a total, total freak when it comes to attacking
09:22the ball, like his drive, his aggression, his leap, it's just every physical element of him
09:27in that situation. It's just, it's amazing. But of course, still, it isn't all about Gabriel
09:33because a corner is only ever as good as the person delivering it in, and in the deliveries,
09:37Arsenal have also got a secret weapon. Gonna bring up the FB ref thing for all the corners that all
09:43the Premier League teams have had this season, and you'll see that Arsenal, they're up there,
09:46they've had a lot of corners this year, but they've had like 30 less than Manchester City,
09:51so they're not like the most prolific getterer of corners or anything. But what should jump out
09:55at you is this column here, right? Arsenal are the most prolific havererers of in-swinging
10:03corners. They almost never, ever out-swing it, play it straight, take it short, anything like
10:07that. Every time they can set this up, they do. And in fact, the only team in the league to have
10:14less in-swingers than Arsenal, the only other team doing this as much as they are, remember how I
10:20said remember Brentford? That was Nicholas Jovers' former team. That's a legacy. 20 more in-swinging
10:28corners this season than any other team. That's like one and a half per game. I can't even bother
10:34to do the maths properly. And just Saka and Rice are so accurate with these, and that is as much a
10:38part of what makes them as anyone attacking the ball. Like, they're not insanely pacey or beautifully
10:44whipped, they haven't got this amazing curl on them, they're not like those David Beckham corners
10:48you used to try and do in the garden when you were like seven years old. They're actually
10:51pretty straightforward. They're just so, so consistent. Just to put all that in numbers
10:57for you, right, 96% of all their corners swing in, and on average, by the time that ball gets into
11:05the box, they have the most number of players in the six-yard area of any team attacking a corner.
11:113.82 players, if you can imagine 0.82 of a player, in the six-yard box every single time
11:18on average. Like for context, the most prolific corner takers in the Premier League Manchester
11:22City have 1.5 players in the box. Six-yard box. Every time. Yes. And the reason I mention Man City
11:29there, by the way, isn't just because they have lots of corners, it's because they also have
11:32loads and loads of very big, beefy lads. They also did that transfer policy of getting rid of most of
11:40sort of little, dainty, nice, clever, tricky players and instead have a back four full of
11:45centre-backs, have big Erling Haaland up front. Like they prioritised height, they prioritised
11:50physicality because again, who weren't there? Nicholas Chova. One final completely undated
11:56ledge or statistical point that I like to make every time I see this happen, right, why do you
12:01think they really prioritise that back post area more than the front post? I'll tell you why.
12:06F***ing eyes. It's the eyes. If you're defending a corner, I don't know if you've ever played
12:11football, if you're defending a corner, you have to look at the ball at some point. Like you need
12:14to know when it's being taken. You need to know where it is in the sky. You need to know what the
12:18threat is, right? And if you are marking a player side-on, you can just turn your head like that,
12:24can't you? You look at both. But if the positioning of the player and the positioning of the ball
12:28puts you smack bang in the middle of the two, you physically cannot turn your head like that. You
12:33have to rotate your entire body around, including your feet, to get a view and keep an eye on both
12:40of them. And when that happens, you just can't do these things effectively. You can't know where the
12:45player is or you can't know where the ball is. And again, such a simple concept, just put them
12:50in a position where they can't see both things, but executed so consistently, brilliantly. Like
12:55the whole thing you have to say about Arsenal with set pieces, isn't that they're doing anything
13:00staggeringly clever or brilliantly innovative. It's just that they're doing very simple things
13:06very consistently and with unbelievable execution. Like I have seen already quite a lot of people go
13:13and these are so set pieces. They're really good. Why isn't every team just doing that?
13:17It looks simple enough. And that's because it takes a lot of time. It's coming. Don't worry.
13:24You're going to see every single team try and do this soon, but you can't just do it tomorrow.
13:29This needs worked on. You need the profiles in your squad. You need to have practiced it
13:33to death and Arsenal are two and a half seasons down that line now, which is why they're so good
13:39at it. But final point I'd like to make, how do you defend against it? Is there a simple way to do
13:44this? And no, there's not that anybody has found yet, but I do have two suggestions for any set
13:51piece coaches or Premier League managers who may be watching this. Now, first off, the corner
13:56Arsenal scored against West Ham went to VAR for this push by Durian Timber. Now, I think if that
14:02West Ham defender throws himself on the floor and makes a massive meal out of that, I think that
14:07gets overturned. Your referee maybe even sees it in real time, or if it goes to VAR, they go,
14:10yeah, that looked, that looked a lot. Arsenal were a little bit lucky to get away with that,
14:14I thought. So one solution you might want to do, and Porto tried this in the Champions League,
14:19is as soon as all that contact starts, as soon as the rush comes into the box,
14:23everybody just fall over. If you are in any way infringed, in any way pushed, if any way moved
14:28around, that's supposed to be a foul, just flop to the ground. I would, it would take a referee
14:34with bollocks that big to not blow that whistle. Now it is of course incredibly risky, because if
14:39you do get a referee with bollocks that big, or just a VAR booth who are sick of players going
14:44down in the six yard box when they've got a hand in their back, Gabrielle, then it might get
14:49overturned and you've just let a team who are really good at set pieces get the easiest set
14:53piece goal you've ever seen. Another possible solution, which I will hold my hands up, I
14:56completely missed and was pointed out to me by Michael Day, who was editing this video. Michael,
15:00please put a quick picture of yourself up on the screen so all the boys and girls can say thank you
15:04for editing the video. Thanks, Michael. He was at the Monaco game and they left loads of players
15:10up the other end of the pitch. And the thought process behind that is very, very, very clever
15:14in my opinion, because if you are outnumbered in terms of, I'll say it again, big beefy boys,
15:19then you need to stop them having that many in the box. And if they've got to leave as many
15:23players up as you leave up, then all of a sudden the amount of big beefy boys is going to be lower.
15:30And to be fair to Monaco, who did get beat 3-0, yes, they did not concede a goal from a set piece
15:37against Arsenal, which right now, it's a good catch, makes them a bit of an anomaly. Anyway,
15:43yes, so there you go. If you've ever wondered just how much can one man over-explain a single
15:48corner routine, basically getting 15 minutes of video out of about 16 seconds of footage,
15:53there's your answer. I just did it, ages. If you like this sort of nonsense, you can get me across
15:57all the social medias, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y-X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, Blue Sky,
16:02maybe Google me. I keep doing that tease. I'm doing something very exciting. You should go
16:05and look it up and you should do something with that. None of my business though. 442 Socials,
16:09they're in the corner of the video. The new magazine is a W.H. Smith. Great stocking filler,
16:15if I do say so myself, and I'm not even someone who wears stockings that I'll ever admit to.
16:19Slightly losing my mind here. Please do subscribe to us here on 442. More subscribers makes us do
16:23more things. More subscribers lets us show the people who schedule the studio time that we
16:27should be in here more. So if you could click on that, that would be really, really helpful
16:31and we'd probably get some more videos out of it. Until next time though, that is it. Thank you very
16:34much for watching. Please do enjoy spotting all of this stuff the next time Arsenal line up for a
16:38set piece. I have been Adam Cleary. You've been frankly beautiful in my opinion and I'll see you
16:44soon. Goodbye.