Set pieces issue, who's to blame? the manager, coaching staff or the players?

A-man said:

I think the number of setpieces is one important factor. Another is how the opposing teams see this as opportunities. They have seen it is a weakness, they have also seen that it is very difficult to score open play goals on our team (both this and last season) and in their tactics, they go for it on setpieces.

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Not to mention how you resolve set-pieces. Unless we are in a prime position for a good shot or a dangerous cross, we tend to not go for goal, as we don't want to lose possession needlessly.

Our opponents on the other hand will try to cross it into the box even if they get a freekick close to the midfield line. A very high percentage of chances that we concede come from long balls and set pieces.

I think the solution is a little more holistic than improve the defence and we concede less from set pieces. Buy a big centre back and we score more from corners. From Ole and the coaching team the defensive shape needs improving more importantly where we defend aggressively.

Take a look at Man City how many tactical fouls do they give away around the centre circle thus defending an attacking situation. Stop the play, stop the momentum, stop the danger. The attacking team is then obliged to attack with one or two options, play it short whilst city are in their well organised shape, or pump it into the box where City have a better chance to defend against it.

Without seeing the stats I would hazard a guess that whilst we have most goals conceded from set plays, we are probably one of the highest for giving away corners. Reduce the number of corners or freekicks (in dangerous areas) conceded, defend higher up the pitch and break down patterns of play. A better 'header' will marginally improve those stats

I think its a combination of coaching and the players. I hate to say it but the one constant in that run of shite is de gea. As for the attacking side cavani, mctom and pogba are the only three who can head the ball.well. It needs correcting fast seeing as we've been near the bottom of the table for two years now and were mid table before that.

Green_Red said:

Could it be a case of you can't be good at everything. Yes we're low on the set pieces table but we've finished second in the league and now have a mentality where we can come from behind and win games. Under those other managers if we went behind we lost.

Rome wasn't built in a day. We have other areas to focus on that are more important, and Ole and his team have done brilliantly improving over overall style of play and our mentality.

Stop looking for things to be negative about.

How can someone be so negative about the team they support?

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How is it being negative when it's an undeniable fact that the team is crap at scoring and defending set pieces for a few years running now?

Ignoring the problems doesn't make them disappear and that seems to be what the club has been doing with regards to most of the problems, just treat it like it doesn't exist and people like you are lapping it up.

Dante said:

Losing the likes of Fellaini and Smalling was always going to make us weaker on set pieces.

The issue at United is that our back 5 only has one excellent aerial presence (Maguire) and one okay aerial presence (Shaw). Everyone else is either poor (De Gea and Lindelof) or abysmal (AWB). McTominay and Pogba do a decent job helping out, but it's obviously not enough.

If we want to get better at defending set pieces, we need to increase the number of physical headers of the ball. Hopefully Henderson and a new CB will do that.

Better coaching would help, but you can't defeat the laws of physics.

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This

@SAFMUTD

Btw, where did you find the stats? I find it crazy that Chelsea scored 22 goals on freekicks and corners in the PL in 2016-17.

I'm also curious about what counts as a set piece goal. If the ball is cleared out of the box and someone scores on the second attempt(this time no longer from a set piece), does that count? How many touches, dribbles, blocks and passes are allowed to happen before it stops being a goal from a set piece?

When it comes to scoring goals on corners we are too simple to read. 95% of all corners are directed towards Maguire, but he has only scored two goals. We must offer some variation. Cavani was great at PSG to meet the ball just before first post at corners and either head it towards the first post or to prolong it in to the box where there is always chaos. The output (3 PL goals in two seasons) suggests that always aiming for Maguire is a bad idea.

We can see in the opening post that we have scored following on setpieces
7 goals 2016/17
14 goals 2017/18
12 goals 2018/19
8 goals 2019/20
7 goals 2020/21

Is there any stats on who the goal scorers were? Or any ideas why we were so weak 2016/17, 19/20 and 20/21, while very strong 17/18 and 18/19?

It's clearly a coaching issue - and I fail to see how people can think it's anything else?

Are people really suggesting there are 18 teams in the league who have individually better defensive players than us who are are able to cope with set-pieces? That's what you're saying when you say this issue is at the fault of players. You can't say the likes of Palace, Brighton, Fulham and West Brom (all teams that finished above us in the above table, with 2 being relegated) have better defenders and that's why they're less susceptible at set-pieces. It's an organisational problem.

There's also a correlation with when Ole joined the club. And the numbers are getting worse every season. In both goals scored and conceded.

It's an issue that has been very apparent all season, and he has shown a complete inability to fix the issue. What exactly have they been doing on the training pitch for the last 12 months that has not only left the issue unresolved, but is actually getting worse? I've seen goals conceded from set-pieces with no-one on either post, a mixture of man and zonal marking within the same set-piece, and some of our smallest players marking the oppositions tallest.

Even if this is Carrick or Mckenna's remit, the buck stops with Ole if the people he has in place are not getting results.

It's even more infuriating when you have Liverpool hiring a dedicated throwing coach to try and eek out that extra 0.5% that can make a difference, and we can't even get the absolute basics right.

You can always put the blame on the manager and the coaching staff for not finding a solution, but looking at our defenders and midfielders, Maguire and Pogba to an extent are the only ones who really try to attack the ball. I feel like I've never seen Lindelof rise highest in the box to head away a set-piece, and I have the same feeling when Matic, Tuanzebe and Bailly are on the pitch too.

It is not about having tall players, your players need to get a run on the opponents and attack the ball, and the management needs to make plans to get the best headers in positions to do so.

Thiago Silva, Rudiger, and James are not taller players than Lindelof, Maguire and Shaw, but I feel that they attack set-pieces much better than ours do. Solskjaer needs to try to put our best headers in much better positions too.

OleBoiii said:

1. We got only got 3 players who are good(ish) in the air: Maguire, McTominay and Cavani. Only Maguire is a dead-on starter and Cavani is more of an offensive header(i.e timing his run so that he doesn't need to outmuscle opponents midair). It's obviously not necessary to have a team of giants in order to survive set pieces, but it helps to have more than one or two players who can win headers fairly consistently.

2. There is a degree of randomness involved with set pieces. Based on the table above, the team that's best on set pieces will still often concede 7 or 8 goals. It doesn't take that many freaky situations over the course of a season to get a higher number than this.

My post is written from a defensive point of view, but the arguments also applies on offensive set pieces.

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Coaching has a lot bigger influence than just having tall players. Look at the best club side ever. Barca where a team made up generally of short arses the same as arguably 2 of the best teams ever in the PL the last 3-4 seasons. The difference is they're coached to deal with set pieces. Each man has his own job to do. We generally defend with zonal marking. An opposition player moves from zone to zone and we don't know how to deal with it. Game after game our players are making the same mistakes. It's a glaring coaching issue that still hasn't been addressed.

Forevergiggs1 said:

It's a glaring coaching issue

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Well, we were heavily criticised for our set piece defending last season too. But we only conceded 4 more goals than the best defensive set piece team. I'm sure that whoever is in charge of coaching set pieces plays a role, but I think that pure randomness, number of freekicks and corners conceded in your own half, and players at your disposal in the box all play an important part as well.

I have said for some time that we are mediocre at corners both taking and receiving. Dunno why. There is usually nobody at the back post which we were taught at school to do. We aware also taught to cross to the penalty spot area for the big blokes to run onto and have two players, one either side of the semi-circle, to deal with rebounds. Standing about in a crowd pushing and pulling is always going to hard.

Forevergiggs1 said:

Coaching has a lot bigger influence than just having tall players. Look at the best club side ever. Barca where a team made up generally of short arses the same as arguably 2 of the best teams ever in the PL the last 3-4 seasons. The difference is they're coached to deal with set pieces. Each man has his own job to do. We generally defend with zonal marking. An opposition player moves from zone to zone and we don't know how to deal with it. Game after game our players are making the same mistakes. It's a glaring coaching issue that still hasn't been addressed.

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We concede a lot more corners than City. 163 vs their 112 last season. They just avoid the issue.

I’ve never been confident with us either scoring or defending set pieces. It goes back years. But last season it seemed like we shat ourselves if the ball came near our box even slightly airborne.

It's coaching and then on the manager for not identifying the coaching in this area needs work or that his staff aren't capable.

Set piece defending is one of those areas where players of all quality can form a really tight defensive unit. We see that all the time. It simply has to improve next season.

Signing players and hoping they know what to do might work in some areas but not where it's a coordinated team effort.

OleBoiii said:

Well, we were heavily criticised for our set piece defending last season too. But we only conceded 4 more goals than the best defensive set piece team. I'm sure that whoever is in charge of coaching set pieces plays a role, but I think that pure randomness, number of freekicks and corners conceded in your own half, and players at your disposal in the box all play an important part as well.

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I do agree there's more variables than just conceding from set pieces but for me it's still a worrying trend. Once again you're right in saying there were only 4 goals difference between us and the least conceded last season but with football being very fine margins those 4 goals could of been 8 or 9 more points. Even though it was only 4 goals we were still the 17th, the 3rd worst in the league so those "just" 4 goals doesn't really mean a lot.

What's more worrying is this year the issue, not only hasn't been resolved but is getting worse with only SU conceding more than us in the league. Bar a few teams we have the best defence in the league so for me it goes beyond the players not being good enough and I don't think there's anything wrong or polemic in saying there's a high percentage chance that it's a coaching problem.

It’s obviously a mix of all of it.

However player wise - i believe we need to stop playing De Gea because he sticks to his line and has no ability to come out and control his box. I much prefer Henderson or have always preferred Romero for this matter.

Next player issue is that we need to replace Lindelof who is only good enough to be our 3rd to 4th best CB. We need an aerial presence that is still good with the ball at his feet. Maguire, a new CB and Henderson should be able to give us this central ability of players who can control set piece defending.

Finally signing someone like trippier should give Wan Bissaka and understanding of his role and the importance of positioning etc and gets to learn from an experienced player who can help to make Wan Bissaka a bit more well balanced like shaw became post Telles.

The fact that we might be adding a physical ball winning CDM aswell and it should give us some extra presence at set pieces too in comparison to someone like Fred.

I think our potential transfers and potential players will help our set piece problems going down a bit - other than that the problem is with the coaches and management.

Green_Red said:

The thread literally has "who's to blame?" in the title. That's not a discussion, it's a blatant attempt to start a negative witch hunt against the management and coaching staff.

We're not good at set pieces because we opted to buy players that aren't strong in the traits required for set pieces. We spent our time on the training ground focusing on improving our play on the pitch, which succeeded because we've managed to win so many points from losing positions.

They way you've worded your op you would think we didn't finished 2nd, we didn't go unbeaten away from home, and we didn't get to a semi final and a final. Beaten by the two winners of those competitions by the way. Not a bad effort to only be beaten by the winners of the competitions.

Say what you want, it's clear you have some sort of agenda against the management and coaching staff.

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It's posts like this that make this place intolerable at times. You can't even raise a discussion on something which is clearly coaching related without people getting mad that it's an attack on the manager.

It's a well proposed debate from the OP with stats to back up the argument but no we have toys instantly thrown out the pram

Leftback99 said:

We concede a lot more corners than City. 163 vs their 112 last season. They just avoid the issue.

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Marginal points make good managers great ones. A lot of people complain about Citys tactical fouls but maybe if we adopted the same attitude then we wouldn't concede as many fouls or corners in the first place. Meaning less chance of conceding goals. Nice guys generally don't get anywhere in life.

I'm not talking Burnley levels of brutality but conceding a foul in one area of the pitch has completely different outcomes than conceding in others.

Attacking wise, the delivery is generally poor and it doesn't look like there is any clear plan or target area to attack.

Defense wise, usually just one player lets the team down. You can coach setups but too often it's down to just one player, letting a man run off them (Shaw), ball watching (Pogba), a token jump for a header (Martial) or expecting someone else to deal with it (Lindelöf).

Almost purely coaching. Even midget teams like Barca weren't that bad at defending and that cautious and unwilling to put a head in for attacking corners.

Mix of zonal marking, poor organisation, and not enough aggressive players in the air willing to challenge for the ball. Our delivery isn't the best either from an attacking sense.

Defensively, we set up zonally to protect the 6 yard line and the GK. We should go man to man, and entrust Henderson/DDG to dominate the width of the posts, or find a GK that will.

From an attacking point of view, our delivery isn't good enough too often. City score so many from set pieces, and rarely concede, so it's not just about size as they are a relatively small team.

Having quality delivery and aggressive ball winners in the air seems to be where we're lacking, not much more to it than that.

Green_Red said:

I actually feel the opposite. Its the constant negativity that our own supporters are posting on here thats the issue with this forum. Since we lost the final its as if a bunch of people have come out of the woodwork to stick the knife into whoever they can. Rashford has take some serious flack from some of our so-called supporters. Not once has anyone pointed out that this season he was coming off the back of a double stress fracture in his back and played a large part of the season carrying an ankle injury. This thread is another example of it. Scraping the barrel to find the negative narrative that can be used to show up the good work our management and coaching staff have been doing. There's no in between in discussions where someone uses stats to point the finger, blame game is the thread title, at our team. I've got loads of United supporter mates and never do I need to debate negativity with them, thats the type of thing I expect from opposition supporters to be completely honest.

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It's human nature to overreact to negative news, and underreact to positive news, so of course you'll see more posts and nonsense threads after a loss.

In this case, the poster has clearly created a genuine thread related to an area the team has struggled with recently, stated his argument, and asked for thoughts on what people think, and how we might fix it.

That is the literal point of a forum, all the other nonsense threads aren't really relevant to this one. This thread isn't positive or negative, simply something to kick-start a discussion.

We haven't scored from one single direct free kick this PL season, have we?

Green_Red said:

The thread literally has "who's to blame?" in the title. That's not a discussion, it's a blatant attempt to start a negative witch hunt against the management and coaching staff.

We're not good at set pieces because we opted to buy players that aren't strong in the traits required for set pieces. We spent our time on the training ground focusing on improving our play on the pitch, which succeeded because we've managed to win so many points from losing positions.

They way you've worded your op you would think we didn't finished 2nd, we didn't go unbeaten away from home, and we didn't get to a semi final and a final. Beaten by the two winners of those competitions by the way. Not a bad effort to only be beaten by the winners of the competitions.

Say what you want, it's clear you have some sort of agenda against the management and coaching staff.

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Okay what?! We're a team who finished second who's hoping to challenge for the title. With us having the joint worst set piece record in the league as well as conceding hopelessly in the EL final, do you not think there needs to be some blame attributed to find the root cause of the problem? Our set piece record has been consistently poor across different CB combinations and Goalkeepers. Do you live in a mental state where Ole is a dictator and only positive things should be spoken about him?

IncyWincySpider said:

We never seem to have anyone on the posts for corners. We always used to have a man on each post (years ago), and we used to man mark which we don't do now. Why these changes were made is beyond me, but cleary they aren't working.

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Haven't see many teams leave people on posts for corners, surprises me as well.

I always don't understand why we don't leave a one player near the centre circle ready for the counter, that would make the opposition think twice about how many people they committ. The current zonal marking is clearly not working, number of times attackers have gone in between defenders is unreal.

OleBoiii said:

@SAFMUTD

Btw, where did you find the stats? I find it crazy that Chelsea scored 22 goals on freekicks and corners in the PL in 2016-17.

I'm also curious about what counts as a set piece goal. If the ball is cleared out of the box and someone scores on the second attempt(this time no longer from a set piece), does that count? How many touches, dribbles, blocks and passes are allowed to happen before it stops being a goal from a set piece?

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Not sure if this is OP's source, but they line up with these:

https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/2...amStatistics/England-Premier-League-2016-2017

And to be fair we had a very tall XI that year - Matic, Cahill, Alonso, Costa, Luiz were all among the most physically and aerially dominant players for their positions at that point.

TheGame said:

I always don't understand why we don't leave a one player near the centre circle ready for the counter, that would make the opposition think twice about how many people they committ. The current zonal marking is clearly not working, number of times attackers have gone in between defenders is unreal.

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This is exactly my thought. We bring everyone back and still concede loads of chances, why not change it up.

Also, the Villareal goal, there was 4 v 10 and they got in with ease. We need a set piece coach asap.

romufc said:

This is exactly my thought. We bring everyone back and still concede loads of chances, why not change it up.

Also, the Villareal goal, there was 4 v 10 and they got in with ease. We need a set piece coach asap.

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This is the biggest thing. Chelsea brought in Anthony Barry last summer and have conceded half as many goals on set pieces as we did last year. Having a goalkeeper who commands the area is the other big key - because otherwise it's not like we're a side that's full of aerial behemoths or anything.

TheMagicFoolBus said:

This is the biggest thing. Chelsea brought in Anthony Barry last summer and have conceded half as many goals on set pieces as we did last year. Having a goalkeeper who commands the area is the other big key - because otherwise it's not like we're a side that's full of aerial behemoths or anything.

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That was very evident at the start of the season. The season before Chelsea kept conceding goals from set plays, the season just gone, not only did Chelsea not concede that many, but scored a fair amount of set piece goals.

Its something Ole seems to ignore.

golden_blunder said:

Couple of things to note;

goal against us in the final. It was taken from a long way out, the players all watched it sailing over their heads, landed for the goal scorer. Did anyone actually attempt to head it clear? Genuinely can’t remember, I just remember it was a shocking goal to concede

secondly look at our players 1 by 1 and rank them honestly on the ability to head

i think you will find then answer to your question

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I don't think it's as simple as that. Both Liverpool and City have played some fantastic stuff the last 3 or 4 seasons and have conceded very little. If you go through both their teams I think you'll find there's very little heading ability defensive wise in either of them.

eire-red said:

Mix of zonal marking, poor organisation, and not enough aggressive players in the air willing to challenge for the ball. Our delivery isn't the best either from an attacking sense.

Defensively, we set up zonally to protect the 6 yard line and the GK. We should go man to man, and entrust Henderson/DDG to dominate the width of the posts, or find a GK that will.

From an attacking point of view, our delivery isn't good enough too often. City score so many from set pieces, and rarely concede, so it's not just about size as they are a relatively small team.

Having quality delivery and aggressive ball winners in the air seems to be where we're lacking, not much more to it than that.

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Interesting that you cite zonal marking as something we need to change but then also point to City's set-piece record despite them being a relatively small team. Don't they set up zonally too?

golden_blunder said:

They have centre backs who can head. Even if nothing else, they can head

thinking of city CBs only

kompany
Mangala
Stones
Diaz
Laporte
Fernandinho when played there

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Maquire is up there with any of them at heading but man for man I can't see much difference in the 2 squads. We have McT, Cavani, Pogba and Matic who can all head a ball and City have their CBs and now Rodri and realistically Pool don't have much more than us. Out of all 3 teams FBs I'd say there's very little difference heading wise which for me makes it more a coaching problem than actual ability.

golden_blunder said:

Ability in the air - defensively

AWB - 4 (out of 10)
Maguire - 9
Lindelof - 5
Shaw - 6
Fred - 4
McTominay - 7
Pogba - 8
Bruno - 6
Bailly - 7 (on a good day, 2 on a bad)
Axel - 5
James - 5
Rashford - 5
Greenwood - 5
Martial - 4
Cavani - 8
Matic - 6
Mata - 4
Jones - 7

harsh on anyone?

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Martial is a better header of the ball than Rashford for one. Lindelof is definitely better than Dan james as well. I'd push most up one point and a couple up two points

Desert Eagle said:

Martial is a better header of the ball than Rashford for one. Lindelof is definitely better than Dan james as well. I'd push most up one point and a couple up two points

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That is being very kind. One thing you should pay attention to is how many second balls we lose because of poor heading from almost 80 % of our team.

This includes Maguire too, numerous occasions on a corner the ball is headed straight to an opponent. Numerous times opposition goal kicks long ball ends up with their CDM because our CDM, CB cannot head the ball to a player in the same shirt. Yes, they may win headers but none of them go where intended. AWB is probably a 3 at heading too, Martial is better than Rashford I agree but nowhere near a 6.