How the Premier League killed Arsenal’s set-piece threat – and the fightback against winning ugly being led by referees, rulemakers… and towels

Remember when set-pieces were destroying football? Remember when Arsenal scored so many goals from corners that Nicolas Jover, their set-piece coach, had his face painted on a mural outside the Emirates? Remember when dead balls were so important that Chelsea met the release clause of Aston Villa’s specialist Austin MacPhee like he was a superstar striker?

Can you blame them? The Gunners, for all their creative tribulations in open play last season, scored a record 19 goals from corners and won the title for the first time in 22 years. Tottenham netted 18 of their own from them to help them survive by the skin of their teeth.

But is this what football had become? Squeeze as many big blokes in the six-yard box as possible and let them wrestle it out, Royal Rumble-style, to see who can get their head on the ball first?

At last summer’s World Cup, analysis by FIFA found that more than 40 per cent of corners saw a member of the attacking team try to block or impede the opposition, up from less than a quarter in Qatar four years earlier. It meant that more than half of all goals scored from corners in the 2026 tournament came courtesy of a blocker.

Back here, referees chief Howard Webb had threatened to clamp down on grappling the previous summer but that soon seemed to be forgotten. ‘You get the feeling now that referees really don’t want to get involved in any of it,’ remarked Everton boss David Moyes last season. Now, the crackdown has begun properly, with officials encouraged to penalise any ‘holding actions that have clear material impact’. Just five weeks into this season, the change is drastic.

Last season, a massive 18 per cent of goals came from corners, by far the highest percentage in Premier League history. Goals from open play, which had lingered around the 70 to 73 per cent mark for the previous eight seasons, dropped to 65 per cent. Now, under the new mandate, goals from open play are back up to nearly three quarters of the 141 we’ve seen so far. Corners have accounted for just 9.9 per cent of them this season – the second-lowest in Premier League history.

More than half the division are yet to score from one, including Arsenal, the masters. Neither have Spurs. Brighton, meanwhile, are embracing the best of both worlds with three goals from corners AND the best Expected Goals (xG) figure from open play in the top flight. 

How much of this slump is down to strict refs? According to Opta, the rate of fouls given within 10 seconds of a corner being taken this season has jumped from 6 per cent last season to 8.1 per cent, and those specifically for grappling – defined by Opta as a push or holding/pulling an opponent’s shirt – up from 4.1 per cent to 5.3 per cent.

None of them, though, have led to a penalty. There were 21 spot-kicks given last season within 25 seconds of a corner. The only one given so far this season for grappling at any kind of set-piece was when Arsenal defender Ezri Konsa was adjudged to have fouled Sunderland’s Dan Ballard after a long throw, but even that one was later ruled to be a mistake. Chicanery while attacking set-pieces appears to have been stamped out.

But dig deeper into the numbers and referees aren’t holding as much sway as it might seem. The xG from set-pieces has dropped a little, from 0.76 per game to 0.72 – or about two goals’ worth across the opening 50 matches of the season – while it’s down from 0.46 to 0.38 per game, which accounts for five fewer goals.

The number of shots from set-pieces has actually gone up slightly, which suggests that teams are having to get the ball into worse positions to get shots off, away from the hustle and bustle of the six-yard box.

So what has happened to Arsenal? Over the past three seasons, they ranked top for set-piece goals. This Saturday lunchtime Mikel Arteta’s former corner kings take on Leeds – the tallest team in the division – without a single set-piece goal, bar a single penalty, to their name. Hardly the easiest opponent against whom to break their duck.

Despite the percentage of corners ending in a foul has gone up across the division, Arsenal’s number has actually fallen. The Gunners aren’t creating as much as they did. Last season they ranked first for xG from set-pieces and third for shots from them. This term, they’re down to ninth and 14th respectively.

And even the chances they are creating aren’t going in. Gabriel, so often their unstoppable force in these situations, has had three attempts on goal from them this season and hasn’t scored. From the quality of chance they have created from set-pieces, they should have a couple, and perhaps that’s just luck correcting itself. Last season, they overperformed their set-piece xG by about five goals.

Arteta has already complained about the impact of another new Premier League rule that bans players from drying balls with towels before throw-ins. Ben White and Declan Rice would often launch long throws into the box last season, from which Arsenal netted a couple of goals. ‘Not being able to use the towels is already a big one,’ said Arteta ahead of the season.

Ahead of Leeds’ visit on Saturday lunchtime, he reflected: ‘You have to adjust to the rules and what is allowed and what is not. That opens other windows to do things that we want to do. We hope to score in a different way. My personal opinion is that we have done better things than last year in the first five games, but we have scored no goals. That is the reality of set-pieces.

‘Last year we had scored three goals by this time, and two of them we didn’t have to do much about and the execution it deserved wasn’t done right. There is an element of luck. I think this season we should have scored more but we haven’t. If we maintain that throughout the season, we will be in really good numbers.’

William Saliba has missed all five league matches so far. His replacement Ezri Konsa will take time to get up to speed with Jover’s tricks and routines. And even he might not be fit to face Leeds. Jurrien Timber, who like Gabriel scored three goals from set-pieces last season – including two against Leeds – has missed three games through injury. Arsenal missing two of their main harbingers of chaos hasn’t helped.

Webb’s clampdown is, perhaps, making teams think a little differently. Sides are taking short corners more often than last season. Goals from open play are back to the levels of previous campaigns after last season’s aberration. Maybe the beautiful game is back after all and Arsenal, this time, can’t just rely on winning ugly.