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Just watching Atletico & they almost score from set pieces v Barca. Set pieces are one of the main reasons they are successful in Spain. And they are very much like an English team, at set pieces.

I was wondering why a club the size of City for example, leaves this kind of stuff to the manager. It is for the most part, totally seperate to the playing style of the team; a passing, possession based team could still score 14 goals from corners and be a passing possession based team. Obviously the average size of the players is a factor but even so, why isn't there a bloke, who is purely there to teach the players ways & means of scoring from corners etc ?

We have goalkeeping coaches, a seperate academy coaching system; why not specialist set piece coaches etc ?

Cricket has nowhere near the money of football, yet they have specialist coaches for the different jobs; these guys analyse every movement & the whole biomechanics of it. We have people in football hitting the first man at corner kicks, every team, every game. Often the team that wins the league takes a load of key points from set piece goals.

For all the money they get, & all the money spent on football science & statistics, they are still missing loads of tricks which would almost guarantee improvement imo.

It's not the most progressive of sports really.

Chelsea's defenders have bagged over 20 this year, many by set pieces and that essentially is what has won them the extra points over us, helping them win the odd game which we've been unable to unlock defences with the sort of nonsense we saw in the 2nd half of today's game around the edge of the box for a while.

Chelsea's centr halves do have a certain presence, but they clearly work on where to deliver the ball and where the big players are going to be.

If we can cut out half a dozen of the silly mistakes at the back, and increase the contribution by our defenders up front , we would be in good shape even before we make replacements

Im_Spartacus wrote:Chelsea's defenders have bagged over 20 this year, many by set pieces and that essentially is what has won them the extra points over us, helping them win the odd game which we've been unable to unlock defences with the sort of nonsense we saw in the 2nd half of today's game around the edge of the box for a while.

Chelsea's centr halves do have a certain presence, but they clearly work on where to deliver the ball and where the big players are going to be.

If we can cut out half a dozen of the silly mistakes at the back, and increase the contribution by our defenders up front , we would be in good shape even before we make replacements

Mangala tbf got in a few shit headers, so the ball must have been delivered there, but that hasn't been the case very often & I recon there are probably plenty of people who will read this line; who would be able to regularly land a football on Mangala's head from a stationary ball. Or any other cunt they fancied hitting. Give me a couple of days to get used to kicking a football & I can do it. I'm sure loads on here could.

But blokes on 150k pw get it wrong; all the time. Not just City, everyone. It's an area where there is huge room for improvement, yet it seems only a few managers have the ability to regularly organise it. I think a huge trick is being missed here & in other repeatable areas of a football game.

Godin just missed a free header from a corner from 8 yards.

Maybe if the guy who took the corners and set piece deliveries was suitably punished at training on Monday morning after making a pigs dinner of them at the weekend. Wash everyone else cars. Make the tea. Wear a dunces hat. That sort of trivial stuff

It really shouldn't be difficult to deliver a dead ball into the box. Do it enough times and goals will come. Hitting the first man six times out of ten just isn't good enough. I'd expect a Sunday side to do better.

nottsblue wrote:Maybe if the guy who took the corners and set piece deliveries was suitably punished at training on Monday morning after making a pigs dinner of them at the weekend. Wash everyone else cars. Make the tea. Wear a dunces hat. That sort of trivial stuff

It really shouldn't be difficult to deliver a dead ball into the box. Do it enough times and goals will come. Hitting the first man six times out of ten just isn't good enough. I'd expect a Sunday side to do better.

It's not just us though. It happens all the time. It's one of the few areas a coach can actually predict accurately the likely positions of the oposition & work out a plan to fuck them up.

Ted Hughes wrote:

nottsblue wrote:Maybe if the guy who took the corners and set piece deliveries was suitably punished at training on Monday morning after making a pigs dinner of them at the weekend. Wash everyone else cars. Make the tea. Wear a dunces hat. That sort of trivial stuff

It really shouldn't be difficult to deliver a dead ball into the box. Do it enough times and goals will come. Hitting the first man six times out of ten just isn't good enough. I'd expect a Sunday side to do better.

It's not just us though. It happens all the time. It's one of the few areas a coach can actually predict accurately the likely positions of the oposition & work out a plan to fuck them up.

Maybe it is just a matter of a bit of practice. Look what happened to Yaya with free kicks from last season. I do think the wrong guy takes our corners though.

nottsblue wrote:

Ted Hughes wrote:

nottsblue wrote:Maybe if the guy who took the corners and set piece deliveries was suitably punished at training on Monday morning after making a pigs dinner of them at the weekend. Wash everyone else cars. Make the tea. Wear a dunces hat. That sort of trivial stuff

It really shouldn't be difficult to deliver a dead ball into the box. Do it enough times and goals will come. Hitting the first man six times out of ten just isn't good enough. I'd expect a Sunday side to do better.

It's not just us though. It happens all the time. It's one of the few areas a coach can actually predict accurately the likely positions of the oposition & work out a plan to fuck them up.

Maybe it is just a matter of a bit of practice. Look what happened to Yaya with free kicks from last season. I do think the wrong guy takes our corners though.

We do practice it though. Last season we were one of the best. Which takes me back to the o.p.
If it was somebody's job purely to sort it out, then imo it would get sorted when it's gone pear shaped.

That would be worth a lot of money in prizes I recon, so I don't understand why it's not done like that. David Moyes can do it once they kick him out of Spain.

nottsblue wrote:

Ted Hughes wrote:

nottsblue wrote:Maybe if the guy who took the corners and set piece deliveries was suitably punished at training on Monday morning after making a pigs dinner of them at the weekend. Wash everyone else cars. Make the tea. Wear a dunces hat. That sort of trivial stuff

It really shouldn't be difficult to deliver a dead ball into the box. Do it enough times and goals will come. Hitting the first man six times out of ten just isn't good enough. I'd expect a Sunday side to do better.

It's not just us though. It happens all the time. It's one of the few areas a coach can actually predict accurately the likely positions of the oposition & work out a plan to fuck them up.

Maybe it is just a matter of a bit of practice. Look what happened to Yaya with free kicks from last season. I do think the wrong guy takes our corners though.

Kolarov is the best corner taker we have as he has shown in the last few games. If he is playing he should take them - from both sides.

If you watch American Football, they have loads of different plays they can make. We seen to have two - hit the first man and hit the far corner flag. Apart from when we play Stoke, when we use lob it into Crouch.

I was having a kick about with my 9 year old last week when he said he was going to practice taking corners. He immediately stick over hand in the air and when I asked him why, he muttered something about it meaning he was about to take it. I suspect the City players have the same opinion - I'll stick a hand up because I saw someone on MOTD do it.

Scoring from corners should be the easiest thing to do for a team and could make a real difference to the points total. That we seem to struggle so much now is odd & needs to be on the fix list for next season. But as Barca don't do it a lot, the Spaniards may not see it as a problem...

Blue Since 76 wrote:If you watch American Football, they have loads of different plays they can make. We seen to have two - hit the first man and hit the far corner flag. Apart from when we play Stoke, when we use lob it into Crouch.

I was having a kick about with my 9 year old last week when he said he was going to practice taking corners. He immediately stick over hand in the air and when I asked him why, he muttered something about it meaning he was about to take it. I suspect the City players have the same opinion - I'll stick a hand up because I saw someone on MOTD do it.

Scoring from corners should be the easiest thing to do for a team and could make a real difference to the points total. That we seem to struggle so much now is odd & needs to be on the fix list for next season. But as Barca don't do it a lot, the Spaniards may not see it as a problem...

I've mentioned this before, but in the book soccernomics, they calculated that fans have an irrational expectation of teams scoring as a direct result of a corner, and that it happened something like only 3% of the time.

Whilst their research was clearly detailed over many seasons and leagues, I see that as being testament to the fact that most teams are shit at it, whilst others can develop plans to gain an advantage.

However, what they did find is that the problem was with delivery from the corner spot while the defence was set provides the defending team with a hge advantage (unless you're city), and that if the team played it into a position to get a better angle from a cross and enticed the defenders slightly out of position, the chances of scoring increased significantly if there were 3 or 4 passes before the ball is delivered into the box.

There will always be exceptions where a team has a player who can land a ball on a sixpence and big cunts who can bully their way to that spot, as perhaps Chelsea do. It takes certain physical and technical attributes, neither of which we appear to posess in our team. We also appear to not have the physical and technical ability to defend corners which makes it a double problem as we score less and concede more

We took some decent corners this weekend, it was baffling why we didn't have at least one player in the right area to take advantage.

Im_Spartacus wrote:

Blue Since 76 wrote:If you watch American Football, they have loads of different plays they can make. We seen to have two - hit the first man and hit the far corner flag. Apart from when we play Stoke, when we use lob it into Crouch.

I was having a kick about with my 9 year old last week when he said he was going to practice taking corners. He immediately stick over hand in the air and when I asked him why, he muttered something about it meaning he was about to take it. I suspect the City players have the same opinion - I'll stick a hand up because I saw someone on MOTD do it.

Scoring from corners should be the easiest thing to do for a team and could make a real difference to the points total. That we seem to struggle so much now is odd & needs to be on the fix list for next season. But as Barca don't do it a lot, the Spaniards may not see it as a problem...

I've mentioned this before, but in the book soccernomics, they calculated that fans have an irrational expectation of teams scoring as a direct result of a corner, and that it happened something like only 3% of the time.

Whilst their research was clearly detailed over many seasons and leagues, I see that as being testament to the fact that most teams are shit at it, whilst others can develop plans to gain an advantage.

However, what they did find is that the problem was with delivery from the corner spot while the defence was set provides the defending team with a hge advantage (unless you're city), and that if the team played it into a position to get a better angle from a cross and enticed the defenders slightly out of position, the chances of scoring increased significantly if there were 3 or 4 passes before the ball is delivered into the box.

There will always be exceptions where a team has a player who can land a ball on a sixpence and big cunts who can bully their way to that spot, as perhaps Chelsea do. It takes certain physical and technical attributes, neither of which we appear to posess in our team. We also appear to not have the physical and technical ability to defend corners which makes it a double problem as we score less and concede more

Whilst the scoring rate may be low overall, how many corners have we had this season? I'd guess it must be around 300, so by average, about 9 goals. They may have been the 7th against QPR, but could also have been one against Stoke or Burnley etc.

Defenders out of position is key - for corners, we just stand there. There's little in the way of simple runs, let alone something off the training ground. If you walk into the area and stand still for 20 seconds, I'd fancy my chances of marking you.

That we seem to struggle to defend them as well is obviously linked. Maybe a British coach as the specialist (not manager) would make a difference - could an Andy Morrison do a better job of explaining what's needed? Another oddity - Mancini made us fantastic defensively, but we struggled to score (relative to the quality of players we had and excepting the first few months of the title win). Pellegrini has made us great going forwards but we struggle at the back. Is it easier to explain what was needed to stop you as a player than to explain what it was you did?

Maybe clubs have specialist set piece defensive coaches too? It's easier to teach how to defend rather than attack. I am sure no stone is left unturned in our pursuit of excellence.

Blue Since 76 wrote:

Im_Spartacus wrote:

Blue Since 76 wrote:If you watch American Football, they have loads of different plays they can make. We seen to have two - hit the first man and hit the far corner flag. Apart from when we play Stoke, when we use lob it into Crouch.

I was having a kick about with my 9 year old last week when he said he was going to practice taking corners. He immediately stick over hand in the air and when I asked him why, he muttered something about it meaning he was about to take it. I suspect the City players have the same opinion - I'll stick a hand up because I saw someone on MOTD do it.

Scoring from corners should be the easiest thing to do for a team and could make a real difference to the points total. That we seem to struggle so much now is odd & needs to be on the fix list for next season. But as Barca don't do it a lot, the Spaniards may not see it as a problem...

I've mentioned this before, but in the book soccernomics, they calculated that fans have an irrational expectation of teams scoring as a direct result of a corner, and that it happened something like only 3% of the time.

Whilst their research was clearly detailed over many seasons and leagues, I see that as being testament to the fact that most teams are shit at it, whilst others can develop plans to gain an advantage.

However, what they did find is that the problem was with delivery from the corner spot while the defence was set provides the defending team with a hge advantage (unless you're city), and that if the team played it into a position to get a better angle from a cross and enticed the defenders slightly out of position, the chances of scoring increased significantly if there were 3 or 4 passes before the ball is delivered into the box.

There will always be exceptions where a team has a player who can land a ball on a sixpence and big cunts who can bully their way to that spot, as perhaps Chelsea do. It takes certain physical and technical attributes, neither of which we appear to posess in our team. We also appear to not have the physical and technical ability to defend corners which makes it a double problem as we score less and concede more

Whilst the scoring rate may be low overall, how many corners have we had this season? I'd guess it must be around 300, so by average, about 9 goals. They may have been the 7th against QPR, but could also have been one against Stoke or Burnley etc.

Defenders out of position is key - for corners, we just stand there. There's little in the way of simple runs, let alone something off the training ground. If you walk into the area and stand still for 20 seconds, I'd fancy my chances of marking you.

That we seem to struggle to defend them as well is obviously linked. Maybe a British coach as the specialist (not manager) would make a difference - could an Andy Morrison do a better job of explaining what's needed? Another oddity - Mancini made us fantastic defensively, but we struggled to score (relative to the quality of players we had and excepting the first few months of the title win). Pellegrini has made us great going forwards but we struggle at the back. Is it easier to explain what was needed to stop you as a player than to explain what it was you did?

We have an average of 7.16 per game for (the most in the league), and 4.08 against (the least in the league).

Therefore we should, even using the averages of soccernomics findings, have scored more and conceded less than other teams if we were on a par with average findings.

However, if we concede more despite allegedly having better defenders, and score less despite having allegedly better attackers, then that must almost certainly come down to a coaching issue, or the actual type of player we have in the attacking and defending situations at corners. (I don't know if we concede more, but I assume we do)

In January talksport ran a piece which showed Chelsea as the most effective, scoring 1 in every 16 corners. Arsenal were in 10th place with 1 in every 41, we didn't make the top 10 so god only knows what our tally was, but clearly Chelsea were at least 2.5x more efficient than us. The top 10 is made up primarily of teams at the bottom end of the league, which suggests that they believe capitalising on corners is an effective way to punch above their weight, as clearly does Mourinho.

patrickblue wrote:

That looks more like 'parking the bus'.

Slim wrote:We took some decent corners this weekend, it was baffling why we didn't have at least one player in the right area to take advantage.

From the 7 we had I remember a City player connecting with at least 4. Mangala on 3 occasions, one header nearly went out for a throw in and the other two he didn't get a clean contact but still managed to head them on target. Navas also got on the end of one, made a nice side footed contact but straight at Flappyhandski, difficult chance to be fair to him.

We have improved recently.

this thread is plane stupid