Arsenal might be one of the great beneficiaries of the great tactical shift in football this season, but Mikel Arteta has been one of the first to break cover and propose a solution to the potentially game-breaking move to ‘meat wall’ corners and long throws. All he and his fellow Premier League managers need to do is stop defending each other man-to-man in the open field.
Arteta’s side has scored 21 goals from set pieces this season, five more than any team in the division, and is among the best at exploiting inswinging corners into a packed six-yard box. The Arsenal manager would push back on any suggestion that his team’s success is entirely predicated on what they do when the ball goes dead — only title rivals Manchester City have more goals from open play this season — but there have been few more intimidating sights this season than the likes of Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba lining up to meet a Declan Rice corner.
Where Arsenal and Brentford have been at the forefront of exploiting set pieces, others have followed. For instance, Liverpool, who sacked set-piece coach Aaron Briggs midway through the season as they struggled to adapt to the league’s new meta, have delivered 38 corners into the box in the last month, of which 35 have been logged as in-swingers. That is a remarkable upswing from the 47 of 92 in the top flight before they made their change to Arne Slot’s coaching staff.
For the league as a whole, the change is rapid. In the first month of the season, 65% of corners were inswingers. In the last month there has been a 20% increase in the proportion of inswingers. Long throws have also proven to be as deadly a threat this season as they have been since Rory Delap and his Stoke City teammates had defenders quivering in their boxes.
Such trends have already prompted a reaction, with lawmakers IFAB to trial a five-second countdown for throw-ins and goal kicks, while there have also been reports of Premier League sporting directors discussing whether changes are needed to combat the set-pieceification of the sport. Speaking ahead of his side’s game against Everton, Arteta said the sport was evolving “like putting information in the best laptop every day,” comparing the changes in the league now to aces in tennis or the three-point revolution in the NBA.
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Doing so invited a question that has been asked after many basketball games in recent years. What about if this tactical evolution breaks the game? “That’s where there are the rules,” he said. “For the long throws, if we don’t want to see long throws it’s very simple give four seconds for the long throws if you need.
“The biggest issue is the man-to-man [defending]. [If] all the managers agree you cannot defend man-to-man and tomorrow you’re going to have a different league. I guarantee you a different league.”
It certainly is the case that Premier League clubs in particular have recruited for themselves a player pool of sufficient athleticism that a man-to-man defensive scheme in open play is no longer quite as much of a gamble as it was a decade ago. The average player in the league has an ability to press and then recover back into a defensive shape that might have been unimaginable to Arteta the player, but is the reality that Arteta the coach has to overcome.
“Everybody is learning from each other,” he said. “It’s like putting information in the best laptop every day and gathering what you do so well, I’m going to try to replicate it the same, the same, the same.
“This is moving so, so fast. But like in any other sport. I mean, when you go to the best tennis players and the best tournaments, it’s like saying ‘no, the serve, you cannot ace with the serve, it’s not allowed.’ No, it is allowed, and it’s a great way to win a championship, and in the NBA saying ‘no, it’s three [points], you cannot shoot from three’. No, no, everybody’s doing it, and everybody’s doing better and better because it’s more effective and it will keep evolving.”
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A week ago it had been assumed that the muscularity and aerial dominance of the Premier League might allow its teams to sweep the board with European opposition in the rounds of 16 of the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. That however, did not come to pass with Aston Villa the only one of nine English sides to win their first leg and Arsenal, Newcastle United and Crystal Palace drawing.
While that felt like something of a come back down to Earth moment for England, Arteta was keen to highlight the performance of the Premier League’s 12th place side against La Liga leaders Barcelona as a sign of the strength in depth in the division his side top. “I realised what’s happening in the Premier League the other day with a really important factor. I was watching the Champions League game between Newcastle and Barcelona.
“For me, Barcelona are the most exciting team in Europe in many moments, the way they play, and they faced one of their Premier League teams, Newcastle, who are exceptional in their intensity, in their high press, everything man-to-man, a huge amount of tools, a really good team in transition. We saw a completely different game than I’ve ever seen Barcelona play, and that’s a huge credit to Newcastle, but this is the league that we are playing in.
“Have you seen the Barcelona of a thousand passes that every week does it in Spain? No, it was a very different kind of game. Can it be beautiful? Yeah, but Newcastle made that game so well done as well, and a huge credit to them the way they did it.
“Newcastle-Barcelona, if you don’t want to see it it’s because probably we have to change the glasses and the perspective that we see the game because this is the reality of our league right now.”
Arsenal vs. Everton viewing information
- Date: Saturday, March 14 | Time: 1:30 p.m. ET
- Location: Emirates Stadium — London
- Live stream: Peacock
- Odds: Arsenal -275; Draw +340; Everton +850
