Set Pieces

One of the teams I'm working with this season scored this last night off my recommendation - gotta love it when a plan comes together and probably the best goal I've "scored" in my career to date!

Shame WFC don't have a bit more creativity in our set-pieces as crossing the ball in isn't working so far...

 

Funnily enough Brighton did a similar routine to this in the first half vs Liverpool yesterday, though Solly March rather scuffed his shot.

 

Haha yeah saw that as well, harder against a zonal system like Liverpools though, more chance of someone coming out and closing it down and more players in the way of the shot!

 

Thought I'd do a little bit of a breakdown on our defensive woes from corners.



First lets look at some stats - when averaging out the goals + xg conceded for the number of corners faced, we've got the worst Goals per corner faced record in the league. Our xG per corner faced isn't bad at all - so teams are making their chances count, rather than us conceding lots of chances.


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The above is how we've defended in our previous 4 games (Millwall top left, Swansea top right, Sheff Wed bottom left, Cardiff bottom right). Zonal markers in orange + man-markers in red - so we're pretty heavy on the zonal marking - usually with Ngakia (#2) and Lewis (#6) as the first line of defence, Bayo (#19) usually takes the front post area with Hoedt (#4), Livermore (#8) and Sierralta (#3) as the main central zonal markers.



These graphics are something I use in my work (and create them by hand rather than using data providers etc) - I use them to show how teams concede/create chances as well as where and who is winning the ball in the different zones. Oddly from Bachmanns right hand side, we're not too bad at defending - however from Bachmanns left hand side it's obvious we're conceding lots of shots and goals in a specific area. Now most of these come from the area occupied by Livermore, and we've conceded a lot from corners since his introduction to the starting lineup (Sierralta took this role previously - so we were much more solid with Hoedt, Porteous + Sierralta centrally) - conceding against Cardiff, Millwall and a disallowed goal against Swansea whilst he's been playing.

Now lets look at some examples to see what exactly is happening (better in fullscreen!).



So as you can see, teams are actively targeting Livermore - either by blocking him and putting him under pressure, or simply by overloading his zone with multiple players

So how do we fix this? Let's look at the table below - i've mentioned this elsewhere on here before, but this is a new metric that looks at aerial performance and assigns a value (called HOPS) based on how many aerial duels a player has won and also looks at who they won them against - rewarding them more for winning aerial duels against better aerial players. A HOPS rating of 0.50 means that player will win an aerial duel against another 0.50 ranked players 50% of the time, so Sierralta would beat the average player 78% of the time in an aerial duel. A few things jump out at me here - that Livermore is worse than an average player in the air, yet occupies such a key position (even if he is sandwiched between Sierralta + Hoedt). Secondly - look how many times Bayo/Rajovic have won the ball by the front post area that they occupy. It's zero. Why are our better aerial players occupying a zone where the ball hasn't landed and is unlikely to be a key area that needs defending?



So to me - the answer is obvious. Put whoever starts between Bayo/Rajovic in that central area instead of Livermore and probably drop Lewis to that front post area, with Livermore replacing Lewis at the near corner of the 6-yard area, I believe that will certainly tighten things up.

 

Very good, but Vio’s not going to hire you

 

It's always a difficult one to try and gauge. Teams can defend well zonally, just as teams that defend man-marking can defend badly - there's no "right" way of defending (otherwise everyone would just do that!). We know Bachmann doesn't like to come claim - so are we better putting lots of bodies in front of him (zonal) to protect him or leaving space in front of him for teams to exploit (more man-marking systems)? I'd say zonal, but then that exposes other issues in our squad. Luckily we've seen that VI isn't afraid to make changes regarding the squad and that was in effect on Saturday - the weakest link in our back-line previously (Livermore) was moved to a more man-marking/blocker role in the middle, with Rajovic moving from the front-post to a more central role. Hopefully this fixes things!

 

He must have read your comments and seen your video from after the Millwall match!

 

Saw this and thought of @reids

https://x.com/gauravanlyst/status/1726221191554408471?s=46

imagine our lot attempting something similar

 

Did we sign Gianni Vio yet then or not? I'm guessing not.

Though defending set-pieces has been even more of a problem for us than attacking them even.

Joint highest goals concede from set-pieces supposedly. We've been pretty decent defensively from open play by contrast. It's a glaring issue.

 

We’ve probably signed him and a team of 5 staff ….and we will release them in the summer as it’s just too bloody confusing having more than one person shouting out instructions at the training ground.

 

Those instructions being:

"When defending, everyone move to the front post".
"When attacking, hit the first man with your cross".

 

Reids and Eustace dream-team is a gooooooooooo

 

Good luck !

 

https://twitter.com/Rovers/status/1761453914224783476

1 game, 1 goal.

 

"Now gents, this might sound radical, but I want you - professional footballers - to kick the football into the penalty area, over the head of the first defender, yes you heard me right over his head.
Whilst this is happening - the big lads with big heads, run at the ball, jump, head the ball at the goal and see what happens."

The Watford players looked stunned at Reids - dumbstruck.

"But sir, what are corners for if not to waste everyone's time getting mildly hyped up before us to fail to kick a football properly?" replied the team.

"That settles it," said Gino angrily "I won't hire such radical thinkers for my coaching staff."

"Very good master" drawled Duxbury as he prepared the order that banned the talented individual, who was voluntarily giving up his time to do a gruelling task to help the club he loved for free, from ever being acknowledged by anyone employed by Watford FC.