It reared its ugly head again against Newcastle, we really struggle defending corners.
But I was watching the Arsenal vs Villa game yesterday and I noticed something interesting.
Spurs and Arsenal have a very similar (near identical) defensive set up from corners.
This is only from this weekends games but I would imagine it’s a regular set up, it certainly is for Spurs.
It’s a mixture of zonal and man to man marking, with the best headers of the ball in zonal and the others being pests going man to man. It forms an L shape from the front post out into the box, creating a line along the 6 yard box in front of the keeper.
The Spurs zonal set up has Porro as the front post defender, Bissouma just out from him and a line behind Biss of van de Ven, Romero and Udogie. Everyone else is picking up a man to basically get in the way and put off there runs.
Arsenals has White front stick, Jesus out from him followed by a line of Havertz, Gabriel and Saliba. And again everyone else acts a blocker to the attackers.
One of the ‘must have’ things this year are dedicated set piece coaches who are getting a lot of attention and credit. Many Spurs fans are very angry we got rid of our one (Vio) who did some great work with Conte’s team. But is the problem defensively bigger than tactics and systems?
We have very few players that are actually good in the air.
Of the players in our squad that I would say are good headers it would be Richarlison, Romero, Emerson and Dragusin.
You could say van de Ven, Bentancur, Hojbjerg, Davies, Kulu and Udogie are ok. The rest of them I would not trust to win a header or even compete for it.
The problem here being of those 10 players only 3 are guaranteed starters in Romero, van de Ven and Udogie with only one been actually good in the air.
And Vicario isn’t the strongest either, he’s not terrible but can get knocked about.
Under Conte and Vio you would routinely have Romero, Dier, Lenglet, Emerson, Perisic, Kane and a couple of the ok people in the team which is just miles better than currently.
You look at Arsenals structure as the same but the players in it are White, Jesus, Havertz, Gabriel and Saliba who are all very good in the air. Plus Raya will come for most crosses if he can.
The system we use to defend corners clearly works with other players in it. But whether it’s the players or the system it’s really not working for us currently.
Someone with more coaching/training knowledge than me will have to help here. Forget attacking and other set pieces just focusing on defensive corners.
Considering the players we have to defend corners, how much difference would a dedicated set piece coach make to the team defensively?
If your players are routinely at a disadvantage aerially how much optimisation can be done to help them that isn’t already presumably been tried?
Is it an Occam’s Razor moment that in some games we will simply be outgunned in the air?
by StevieTHFC
1 Comment
It’s maddening considering in most games 9 times out of 10 we seem to lose the first contact which then results in a panic by everyone in the box and we scramble to get it clear or we concede soft goals.
Kane was vital in defending corners as he in his zone would be the first line of defence which (by OP graphics, could just be this game) Kane has been replaced by Porro, which in turn is night and day in terms of being able to defensively header away corners between him and Kane.
Then it comes down to who goes man for man, for instance on couple of corners Johnson was picking up Burn, I get the fact he’s probably there to block Burn’s run but it’s a complete mismatch, for Schar’s goal I think it was Kulusevski who was supposed to be marking him (could be wrong) but whoever it was it was a complete shambles.
It’s something we have to put right and maybe Ange just has to give in and hire a set piece coach.