Analysis Corner: Who's best at set pieces
By Dougie Wright (@dougie_analysis)
In a typical game of football, set pieces don’t take too much time. If you combine the time taken over every throw in, free kick, penalty and corner, it scarcely adds up to five minutes. And yet, in this season’s Scottish Premiership, nearly one in every four goals comes from a set piece (one in five if you exclude penalties).
They are effective for two main reasons:
1) Opponents who aren’t mentally sharp may “switch off” positionally. This may mean they track back a little bit slower, or don’t stick to their man as tightly. Watch for this at throw ins in particular- seemingly the most innocuous of all the set plays, Rangers have given away two goals following them this season due to sloppy positioning.
2) They allow the attacking team to initiate a choreographed routine. Set pieces are great for video analysts. You can spot how an opponent typically defends free kicks/corners. Does the wall always jump? Do any opposition players have a tendency to lose their man easily? Are there any areas of the box left unguarded? Once a weakness is identified, you’re just a bit of work on the training ground away from a goal.
The bottom line is that set pieces are reasonably low hanging fruit for teams willing to do their homework.
So who are the most effective in Scotland?
Without including penalties, here’s how the table looks:
As with so many other aspects of their preparation, Celtic are clearly the benchmark in the Scottish Premiership when it comes to facing set pieces. Of course they will naturally concede fewer due to their dominant style of play, however to have only conceded once from a set piece after well over twenty games is impressive.
For Ross County, it’s interesting to note that over a third of their goals come from set pieces. They’re bottom of the table as it is; it’s fair to say that their proficiency from set pieces is just about the only thing that’s kept them from being cut adrift at the bottom.
The final point of analysis from the figures alone is the difference between Aberdeen and Rangers. While Rangers have beaten Aberdeen three times already this year, they still find themselves behind the Dons in the table. Aberdeen are renowned for an organised, attritional style of play. The fact that they’ve scored four more than their Glasgow rivals from set pieces would seem to back this up, and may well be the difference between the sides at this stage of the season.
In any given Scottish Premiership game, an average of 2.6 goals are scored. This means that over the course of a season, games involving your team will involve twenty four goals coming from set pieces. Ensuring that they swing your way could be the difference between second and third, top and bottom six, or relegation and safety. Using the figures in the table above, it should be pretty clear whether or not your team’s paying attention to them.
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