Our set-piece defending

BusbyMalone

First Man Falling
Joined
May 22, 2017
Messages
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So we managed to concede another set-piece goal last night and it happened to be the winner. Without even delving into the stats, I think most of us can agree just by using the eye test, we’re not great at defending these set-pieces. Whether it’s a corner or a free-kick, we seem to have an issue here. As soon as that ball goes airborne, it appears to create a bit of uncertainty.

Anyway, we’ve conceded 38 goals this season, which puts us in third (along with Arsenal, surprisingly) behind Chelsea (32) and City (26). So not terrible, but when you look at where we’re conceding those goals, 20 of them are from open play (which is the second-best record in the league behind City on 14) but 12 are from set-pieces.

This actually makes us the second-worst team in the league for defending set pieces, along with Wolves and Crystal Palace (Leeds are the worst at 15) For comparison, City have conceded a paltry 3 goals from set-pieces.

What’s going on here? Is this a coaching issue? Players? Both? The thing is, these goals we’re conceding are important goals, too. Just off the top of my head, we lost at home to Sheffield United 2-1, and one of those goals was from a set-piece. The winning goal last night, too. And that last-second goal from Everton to draw 3-3 was from a big, booming long ball into the box.

Carl Anka actually wrote an article on this a few months ago:

https://theathletic.com/2388817/2021/02/16/manchester-united-punished-set-pieces-why/
 
I think it's a bit of both.....Ole utilizes a zonal marking scheme mixed with man marking. I just really fcking hate that style of marking as it takes responsibility away from the players and knowing who you are making and who you are responsible for when the ball is put in the box. It also is on the players for doing their job. Matic yesterday never got off the ground. He just stood there like an old dead tree rooted to the ground. There was ZERO challenge made by him to win the ball as he was zonal marking and didn't look to see if anyone was coming for the header.

It's not that we don't have size with the likes of Maguire, Pogba, Lindelof, Matic, McT, Cavani.....they just have to stick their head in there like Vidic used to do
 
Zonal marking is shite, that's your answer. It basically relies on your blockers to block the runners well enough that your taller players can win a uncontested header.

Nobody can convince me that leaving your smaller players to mark the taller players is a good idea.

When your taller players are planted static it's so much harder to get momentum on the ball compared to another running and jumping.

See Dunk's goal for Brighton as the perfect example of this.
 
Easy to say it's the zonal marking nonsense but it really is in our case.

I don't really understand how a stationary defender in a particular zone can stop an attacker running at them with momentum which is what a lot of these situations end up being.
 
Yesterday I think the mistake was making the sub on their set-piece. And then let Rashford mark Soyuncu - which was a disaster.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Zonal marking is shite, that's your answer. It basically relies on your blockers to block the runners well enough that your taller players can win a uncontested header.

Nobody can convince me that leaving your smaller players to mark the taller players is a good idea.

When your taller players are planted static it's so much harder to get momentum on the ball compared to another running and jumping.

See Dunk's goal for Brighton as the perfect example of this.
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I'm with you on this. Perhaps I'm a philistine and don't understand the intricacies of it, but I really don't get zonal marking at all. For me, it just seems like a needless complication to a simple problem (i.e., get your tallest and best players in the air to mark the danger men).
 
lysglimt said:
Yesterday I think the mistake was making the sub on their set-piece. And then let Rashford mark Soyuncu - which was a disaster.
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That may be the problem yesterday, but this is a season-long issue. Even when we don't concede from a set-piece, there's often a bit of scrambling going on in the box to clear the ball. It's a big coaching problem for me.
 
BusbyMalone said:
I'm with you on this. Perhaps I'm a philistine and don't understand the intricacies of it, but I really don't get zonal marking at all. For me, it just seems like a needless complication to a simple problem (i.e., get your tallest and best players in the air to mark the danger men).
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Agreed.

Apparently it's "statistically better" to use zonal marking, but I feel now that pretty much every team is using it they know how to get around this.

Teams have started just piling everybody into a concentrated area (around the goalkeeper usually) to disrupt this. It's all got a bit silly.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Agreed.

Apparently it's "statistically better" to use zonal marking, but I feel now that pretty much every team is using it they know how to get around this.

Teams have started just piling everybody into a concentrated area (around the goalkeeper usually) to disrupt this. It's all got a bit silly.
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This is something else I don't get. I know keepers are over-protected as it is, but when you see a swarm of players literally boxing the keeper in it just seems a bit absurd to me. It's comical at times, and I'm not sure why it's allowed. I don't know the solution to it, but it just doesn't seem right that you can do that.
 
Always thought it should be pure zonal or pure man-marking, but we tend to go with a mixed strategy, and that can result in divided responsibility between two ( Rashford and Matic ) and uncertainty about whether to react as we saw in yesterday's winner by Soyuncu.

If a strategy doesn't work, make things as simple as possible, put our best on theirs until you have decent time ( preseason, better schedule ) to coach otherwise.
 
Its actually disgraceful. We've improved so much but to be so woeful at this is a genuine black mark against our coaches and players. The goals are damning enough but we look vulnerable almost every time and to set pieces from every direction. It's absolutely awful
 
I don't know what the stats are but I wouldn't be surprised if we are one of the worst at scoring from set-pieces also (excluding penalties). We are not short of tall players so it isn't a height issue and seems to be a lack of aerial authority at both ends of the field.
 
I agree it’s one of our biggest issues and some of that does have to fall onto the coaches. I still think a bigger issue is personnel though. Neither De Gea or Henderson look particularly convincing from corners but I’d argue De Gea is the weaker of the two because he never leaves his line at all. In the box, only Maguire is a genuinely good defensive header of the ball. Our midfielders (Pogba, McTominay,) do okay and Cavani helps when he’s on the pitch but we are really lacking another dominant header of the ball. I don’t think even our own fans realise how good Vidic was at this particular element, the man had a magnet in his head and would beat anyone to the ball.
 
TrustInJanuzaj said:
I agree it’s one of our biggest issues and some of that does have to fall onto the coaches. I still think a bigger issue is personnel though. Neither De Gea or Henderson look particularly convincing from corners but I’d argue De Gea is the weaker of the two because he never leaves his line at all. In the box, only Maguire is a genuinely good defensive header of the ball. Our midfielders (Pogba, McTominay,) do okay and Cavani helps when he’s on the pitch but we are really lacking another dominant header of the ball. I don’t think even our own fans realise how good Vidic was at this particular element, the man had a magnet in his head and would beat anyone to the ball.
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Agreed with this. Not going to pretend to know the finer details of the pros and cons of zonal vs man marking on set pieces, but it seems to me way to many of our conceded goals this year have come from situations where the opponent have been able to finish on goal completely uncontested, and worse still, its often one of their big threats in the box.

New players aside, this is one of the big things we need to improve on come next season.
 
This is the biggest black mark against Ole and the coaching staff, never mind all of that nonsense about patterns of play. This is a genuinely legitimate gripe.

Defending corners should be easy; we’re absolutely horrible at them in spite of fielding a team full of big fellas. It’s so unnecessary.
 
Agree, improving set-pieces both attacking and defending + good recruitment, and we will be challenging for major trophies. Not telling that we shouldn't improve on Lindelof, but don't even find our defense slow and in need of a faster CB to pair with Maguire as we don't often concede chances/goals from exploiting spaces behind our, occasionally, high line. Except for that night in Turkey..and it also started with our corner isn't it ? :wenger:
 
Bobcat said:
Agreed with this. Not going to pretend to know the finer details of the pros and cons of zonal vs man marking on set pieces, but it seems to me way to many of our conceded goals this year have come from situations where the opponent have been able to finish on goal completely uncontested, and worse still, its often one of their big threats in the box.

New players aside, this is one of the big things we need to improve on come next season.
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We just aren't a very brave team.

Rashford since his injuries has become a bit of a pull out it has to be said. He was subbed on and immediately his job was to block Lord Farquart.

Watch his actions back, he basically just stands still ball watching and lets him get a running leap on Matic. Matic himself is ball watching and barely attempts to jump for the ball either. He might be tall but he's hardly a bruiser.

It just seems mad to me that pretty much their only genuine aerial threat is being dealt with by 2 of our less physical players.
 
Adam-Utd said:
We just aren't a very brave team.

Rashford since his injuries has become a bit of a pull out it has to be said. He was subbed on and immediately his job was to block Lord Farquart.

Watch his actions back, he basically just stands still ball watching and lets him get a running leap on Matic. Matic himself is ball watching and barely attempts to jump for the ball either. He might be tall but he's hardly a bruiser.

It just seems mad to me that pretty much their only genuine aerial threat is being dealt with by 2 of our less physical players.
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Not just that, Matic didn't even put his body out to make a challenge or make Soyuncu harder to have a clean header. He positioned himself more facing in direction to De Gea than Soyuncu making his job even easier as he turned him his back and look "smaller".
 
It's just a weakness with most of our squad. Statistically I think the chances of scoring from a corner are quite low, so even if our defensive record is quite bad I think it's pretty low on the list of desirable attributes you'd want in a player.

If it goes near post we have good players there to defend it. Pogba and Cavani do a good job.

If it goes past that then I'd say 90% of the time the player getting his head to it is Maguire. It's rarely ever someone else.
 
It's baffling why we haven't sorted this out. This is why I think Ole needs better coaches around him. He doesn't seem to care so much about details, which I don't like.
 
Our zonal system is basically an invite to flood the 6 yard box and put it on top of the keeper. And we can't deal with it.

I'm also fairly sure 90 percent of defensive headers in our box are Maguire, Pogba and Cavani. We could do with another CB who attacks the ball.
 
Lux Thunder said:
Agree, improving set-pieces both attacking and defending + good recruitment, and we will be challenging for major trophies. Not telling that we shouldn't improve on Lindelof, but don't even find our defense slow and in need of a faster CB to pair with Maguire as we don't often concede chances/goals from exploiting spaces behind our, occasionally, high line. Except for that night in Turkey..and it also started with our corner isn't it ? :wenger:
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Yeah but the reason they don’t get in behind is because we play Fred and mctominay in front of them to protect them and don’t play so high up the pitch. So we do need a faster CB.
 
I’ve heard stats say zonal is the most effective way of marking but that doesn’t mean that we’re good at it. So for us i think it’s the wrong way to go. So many times I watch the big players power in headers because they’re being marked by people like Fred or Rashford and Maguire is nowhere to be seen because he’s marking space. Like how does that make sense? Surely you put your best header again theirs and make it a dual. If they win it, fair play they earned it. We just give away goals for fun.
 
Lux Thunder said:
Not just that, Matic didn't even put his body out to make a challenge or make Soyuncu harder to have a clean header. He positioned himself more facing in direction to De Gea than Soyuncu making his job even easier as he turned him his back and look "smaller".
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Yep, ball watching with his whole body not just his neck.

In that situation he doesn't even need to win the header, just do enough to stop him getting enough contact on it. One day we'll get it right :nono:


Mickson said:
It's baffling why we haven't sorted this out. This is why I think Ole needs better coaches around him. He doesn't seem to care so much about details, which I don't like.
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I think it's more the statisticians influencing his decision. All sorts of experts tell you how to play football by numbers these days.

Zonal marking for me is just a way people to take less responsibility which is never a good thing when defending. Defending at corners is about commitment.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Yep, ball watching with his whole body not just his neck.

In that situation he doesn't even need to win the header, just do enough to stop him getting enough contact on it. One day we'll get it right :nono:



I think it's more the statisticians influencing his decision. All sorts of experts tell you how to play football by numbers these days.

Zonal marking for me is just a way people to take less responsibility which is never a good thing when defending. Defending at corners is about commitment.
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And the numbers surely say that we are shit at defending set pieces?
 
It has been our big weakness this season. Actually it is not setpieces in general, but more specifically corners. If you count second and third wave after corners I think it is even more than 12 goals.

Only City and Liverpool have conceded significantly less corners. We average 4.3 per match, pretty much the same as Chelsea.


Defending corners is a team effort. We are a team who are worse than average in the air. We have played many matches without any midfielder or forward who is good in the air. But this is still a problem with the organisation imo.

All that said, we have improved a lot actually. I don’t have the stats but I am sure we conceded more from corners the first half of the season as compared to the second.
 
HailtotheKing said:
Yeah but the reason they don’t get in behind is because we play Fred and mctominay in front of them to protect them and don’t play so high up the pitch. So we do need a faster CB.
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Agree, if we gonna switch to 4-3-3, but my post was intended with Ole to stick with double pivot what could happen. In that case, we might be targeting center back's with more aerial ability than pace. With our issues with the set play and that this is our obvious weakness I can see that reasonable to do. It would be ideal to get both proper DM and CB who has enough pace to play a high line, but less likely to happen with our budget and other targets ( Sancho ). If you can choose one, what would you prefer, an aerially stronger CB with a solid pace or someone faster with less presence in the air ?

Adam-Utd said:
Yep, ball watching with his whole body not just his neck.

In that situation he doesn't even need to win the header, just do enough to stop him getting enough contact on it. One day we'll get it right :nono:
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Exactly.
 
Looked at the stats. We conceded a lot of set piece goals the first 25 matches, but only 2 in the last 10 matches (and 1 of them vs Leicester when we didn’t have any first xi defender on the pitch). It is a little too short stretch of matches to say we have improved, but at least it supports the feeling I had :)

I will match the stats to which goal is has played as well but will have to wait a little.

Not saying we shouldn’t improve, but to some extent this is the price we have to pay for having speedy and small players instead big guys.
 
Lux Thunder said:
Agree, if we gonna switch to 4-3-3, but my post was intended with Ole to stick with double pivot what could happen. In that case, we might be targeting center back's with more aerial ability than pace. With our issues with the set play and that this is our obvious weakness I can see that reasonable to do. It would be ideal to get both proper DM and CB who has enough pace to play a high line, but less likely to happen with our budget and other targets ( Sancho ). If you can choose one, what would you prefer, an aerially stronger CB with a solid pace or someone faster with less presence in the air ?
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I'd rather a strong CB with pace because I think it would transform the way we play football. Conceding goals from free kicks is annoying. But if we created more chances, we'd score more goals so it wouldn't matter as much.
 
A-man said:
It has been our big weakness this season. Actually it is not setpieces in general, but more specifically corners. If you count second and third wave after corners I think it is even more than 12 goals.

Only City and Liverpool have conceded significantly less corners. We average 4.3 per match, pretty much the same as Chelsea.


Defending corners is a team effort. We are a team who are worse than average in the air. We have played many matches without any midfielder or forward who is good in the air. But this is still a problem with the organisation imo.

All that said, we have improved a lot actually. I don’t have the stats but I am sure we conceded more from corners the first half of the season as compared to the second.
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Yeah, that would be interesting to know actually. As i was alluding to in the OP, it's not just the goals we concede but it's the pandmonium it causes even when we clear it. Everytime we concede a corner i'm just expecting the worst. And it's so frustrating becuase as i highlighted, the goals we've conceded from open play isn't too bad. And i don't think we've conceded ONE counter-attack goal, so we're not being ripped apart in general play. Just silly mistakes.
 
One of our main issues atm probably. And while being vulnerable when defending set pieces, we're no danger at set pieces in opposition's box. Every time we get a corner I just now they'll manage to clear it easily.
 
BusbyMalone said:
Yeah, that would be interesting to know actually. As i was alluding to in the OP, it's not just the goals we concede but it's the pandmonium it causes even when we clear it. Everytime we concede a corner i'm just expecting the worst. And it's so frustrating becuase as i highlighted, the goals we've conceded from open play isn't too bad. And i don't think we've conceded ONE counter-attack goal, so we're not being ripped apart in general play. Just silly mistakes.
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I don’t have the stats now but when we had conceded our first 20 goals this season 9-10 of them were from setpieces (if you include second and third wave, which are not included in official stats). Also, the quick free kick to Son who scored is not included as set piece goal in the official stats. Overall this gives a picture that we are very good at defending open play, and very bad at defending corners.
 
Every single corner we concede ends up in a dangerous situation.
 
Near penalty came from a corner- concede from the next corner.
 
Another shit goal to give up when we won the initial ball with Henderson punching it clear but no one to win the second ball or press the ball in our box.....remarkable how poor we are when it comes to that considering the size we have on set pieces
 
Surely one of the coaches at the club knows how to set up a defensive unit from a corner.
 
bosskeano said:
Another shit goal to give up when we won the initial ball with Henderson punching it clear but no one to win the second ball or press the ball in our box.....remarkable how poor we are when it comes to that considering the size we have on set pieces
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It was a shite punch right to the edge of the box. It starts with weak keeping.
 
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