Arsenal have set a new benchmark when it comes to scoring goals from set-pieces and have already tormented many top teams with their tactics in the 2024/25 season.
Gabriel Magalhaes scored two brilliant goals from corners against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, with their unusual style being near impossible for teams to decrypt right now.
Mikel Arteta’s side almost seems to employ some rugby tactics in clouding the opposition goal with physical, towering players, and Gabriel’s smart running and execution in the area has helped score many vital goals this season.
Arsenal had scored 22 goals (excluding penalties) from set-pieces in the 2023/24 season, with set-piece coach Nicolas Jovar earning a lot of praise for transforming them into a menacing team to defend against set-pieces.
While the Arsenal men’s team are enjoying the riches of their excellent set-piece techniques, the same cannot be said about their women’s team.
The Gunners’ female side have had a pretty decent start to their campaign, progressing to the UEFA Women’s Champions League group stages and being in fourth place after two Women’s Super League games.
They’ve scored a total of six goals (across all competitions) so far, but none of them have been through set-pieces.
All goals have been thanks to slick free-flowing attacking football and Jonas Eidevall’s side just doesn’t have the same cutting-edge set-piece style as Mikel Arteta’s squad.
Recently, a video started going viral on social media showing a TikTok clip of how underwhelming the Arsenal Women team’s set-piece attempts have been.
The clip is from their recent 1-0 win over Leicester City Women in the league and a mashed-up version of how repetitive and boring their set-piece attempts were.
The clip is comprised of four different corner routines that the Arsenal female players attempted.
It shows striker Beth Mead and defender Katie McCabe try out the same short-corner routine. Mead can be seen playing a short pass to McCabe before making a darting run on McCabe’s right to try out a potential crossing chance from there.
Well, Arsenal were not able to score any goals from these attempts and only left supporters more frustrated.
Some Gooners have voiced their displeasure at this annoying short-corner routine and are confused over why the Men’s and Women’s teams coaching staff can’t share their ideas with each other.
That is probably because Arteta’s staff hardly interacts with Eidevall’s because they train in different areas, have different schedules and are focused on their own team’s development.
An Arsenal fan also noted why the women’s team might be preferring short corner tactics because they lack a major aerial presence in their midst, unlike the men’s team that has players like Gabriel Magalhaes or William Saliba.
But the set-piece issues of the female side is a bit surprising considering how impressive they were in scoring from such situations a few seasons ago.
In the 2020/21 season, the Arsenal women’s team scored six goals from corners in the Women’s Super League. That is the same number of overall set-piece goals by the Men’s team in the Premier League that campaign.
The Arsenal women also scored seven corners in the 2021/22 WSL season too, having the third-best record in the division in that metric.
Arsenal Women’s team have recently gotten a new set-piece specialist coach in Chris Bradley, whom Eidevall hopes will help improve their rut from such situations.
He stated: “Chris is taking over the setpieces, which is very exciting. Chris is very ambitious with setpieces, and he has a lot of experience with them in the men’s game. And we bring him here because he also has expertise in the women’s game. That is very exciting, and I think you see today some of the fruits from that; obviously, we want to see an improvement over time.”
Bradley has a major task ahead of him if he aims to make the Arsenal women as menacing from corners as the men’s team are.
Perhaps he can take some tips from Nicolas Jovar in private and adapt some of the Spaniard’s techniques to help bring that edge to Arsenal Women’s set-piece prowess and help them score even more goals!