Arsenal have become a nightmare in corners and set-pieces over the 2024/25 season, with opposition players having little idea how to stop them from scoring goals in those situations. The Gunners completely bamboozled Manchester United in their recent 2-0 win, scoring both goals from corners to unlock their stubborn shape.
The Gunners have scored 23 goals from set-piece in all competitions so far this campaign. They’ve even been mocked as the new ‘Stoke City’ for relying on corners or free kicks so far. The person responsible for making them so efficient and near unstoppable in these situations is not Mikel Arteta, but his set-piece coach Nicolas Jover.
Jover was poached by Arteta in 2021, when he convinced him to join him from Manchester City as Arsenal’s set-piece coach. The 43-year-old German-born French coach has worked as Brentford’s set-piece coach in the past and helped Arsenal score 16 goals from corners in the 2023/24 Premier League season – a record number from a team for a single campaign.
Arsenal fans now probably adore Jover as much as they do with Arteta and some supporters decided to show their love for the 43-year-old by commemorating him on the walls outside the Emirates Stadium. Some Gooners decided to draw a new mural of Nicolas Jover in the walls of the Hornsey Road tunnel right outside their stadium in London.
This is a black and white colored mural that shows Jover wearing an Arsenal jacket with his ‘NJ’ initials and smiling towards the passing by people. The walls of this particular tunnel are filled with murals of Arsenal players, including Bukayo Saka, William Saliba and Leandro Trossard.
This is a rare occasion when a set-piece coach has ever gotten this kind of attention and earned their own mural. Assistant coaches or set-pieces coaches usually get overshadowed by the manager/head coach, but Arsenal’s incredible success in such situations with Jover’s innovative methods have earned the Frenchman a lot of acclaim.
The irony is that the mural for him at the Hornsey Road tunnel is actually drawn towards the ‘corner’ of the wall, a sweet homage for him being responsible for all the devastating corners. This is a rather sweet way for the Arsenal fans showing their appreciation for the 43-year-old, but it appears to have rubbed some rival fans the wrong way.
The Gunners have earned utmost mockery for creating a mural for a non-playing set-piece coach and being slammed for having a ‘small club mentality’ with stuff like this. Some have claimed that helping them improve in set-pieces ‘is Jover’s job’ and that he doesn’t need special recognition like a mural for doing just that.
There have been claims that not even a team like Stoke City fans would probably do something for their set-piece coach.
Chelsea fans are taking a dig at this mural by claiming that the Gooners are trying to sensationalize their set-piece heroics after they slammed the Blues as ‘boring’ in the pas for trying to win games via set-pieces at the Emirates in the past.
Fans have also found this to be funny considering how weak Arsenal were in the past against set-piece heavy clubs like Tony Pulis’ Stoke or Sam Allardyce’s Blackburn Rovers.
Some fans have also found it really funny how Jover managed to be etched into the walls of the famous tunnel before Arteta himself.
But Arsenal fans are making sure they are not taking all the mockery lying down. Some Arsenal fans are already starting to plans ‘yearly pilgrimage’ to visit this mural and celebrate their set-piece goals.
More than anything else, however, this is a sweet way of Arsenal fans showing how special Jover has become for helping them become this nightmarish threat on corners and free kicks. The 43-year-old is probably Mikel Arteta’s most valuable asset in the coaching staff right now and someone whom the club would want to hold onto for a long, long time.
