We’ll Work As One

[Tannochsidebear 2,322]

If a team is not well drilled in defending against set pieces, it can spell disaster. In that regard, I agree that they are important. However, if you consider that the top teams in any any league tend to only score around 5% - 20% of their goals from set pieces, its plain to see why they are very often not such a focus these days. It's therefore reasonable to expect a team to train for offensive free kicks for up to 20% of the time if was being done proportionately.

 

However to achieve a 20% rate of contribution of goals from set pieces, you need set piece specialists. Remember that this doesn't just apply to the player taking the initial kick/throw, it applies to those around them too. We just don't have that capability within the team, so we can choose to spend the time training those skills, or focus on open play. Unless we do that we will operate towards the 5% end of the spectrum. Focussing on improving chances from open play is much more productive.

 

Teams like Crystal Palace and WBA have a policy of signing players that are set piece specialists. In open play they are a decent side, but they are very successful in set pieces with around 50% of their goals coming from set plays. A team's reliance (or otherwise) on set pieces is also therefore a big part of its recruitment strategy. It's also plays a massive part in the way a team's tactics are trained.

 

It's fair to say that Toral is a very good dead ball player, but we have very few receivers capable of making the most of the chances he can create. If set pieces are to become a bigger part of our game, we are going to have to train or recruit for this purpose. Until then, we can train in offensive set pieces but it won't make a massive difference for a long time.

 

PC knows this though, but it won't stop him from quite rightly making us a better organised unit when defending against them.

 

It's perhaps also of interest to note that in amateur leagues, the proportion of goals scored from set pieces increases to between 30% and 80% (believe it or not). I've not looked into this so much, but I imagine this is due to the defensive frailties rather than the ingenuity of the set piece 'specialists'.

 

Good analysis Gaffer, I am much more interested in our ability to defend set plays than our offensive contribution. Under Warburton with Wilson & Kiernan at the back it felt like every corner was like a penalty and it only had to be good delivery for a goal to come from it. We certainly conceded more than 20% of goals from set plays (or it felt like it anyway!).

 

The one thing I pulled MW up for on day one and continued throughout was his naive notion that he didn't look at the opponents, it was about what we did. This was fairly evident in our defending during his tenure.

 

Like MW however, Pedro is on a total charm offensive with all the right words and phrases, so let's hope he has more walk than talk.

[Gaffer 1,665]

Good analysis Gaffer, I am much more interested in our ability to defend set plays than our offensive contribution. Under Warburton with Wilson & Kiernan at the back it felt like every corner was like a penalty and it only had to be good delivery for a goal to come from it. We certainly conceded more than 20% of goals from set plays (or it felt like it anyway!).

 

The one thing I pulled MW up for on day one and continued throughout was his naive notion that he didn't look at the opponents, it was about what we did. This was fairly evident in our defending during his tenure.

 

Like MW however, Pedro is on a total charm offensive with all the right words and phrases, so let's hope he has more walk than talk.

 

I completely agree with you that every set piece against us was such a nervy affair. You could almost sense that teams were expectIng to score against us. And of course that expectation (and nerves from our own support) just adds more pressure on the team when defending these set pieces.

 

MW spent very little time analysing the opponents and it showed, especially at corners. Corners should be the easiest set piece to defend against. Did you know that scoring from a direct corner (i.e. one where the corner is crossed without any short pass to a team mate first) has a scoring chance of less than 2.4%? In other words, you should only expect to concede a goal once in every 40 corners. This season our rate of conceding was nearly 6%. That's about as poor as it gets. Our players are not that much worse than other players so it showed how poorly organised we were during those stages of the game.

 

Equally, defending against counter attacks should be the next simplest thing to do. Most teams will go through a season having scored only four or five times from a counter attack, despite what you might think intuitively (Man City are currently one of the best in Europe and they've scored only 10 from counter attacks). We lost the majority of our goals from such a breakdown. Having a relatively simple offence to defence transition, coupled with a little knowledge of the opposition should be enough to blunt these attacks, but we didn't have this. I can appreciate MW's philosophy of dominating the ball and he's absolutely correct to focus the attention on that phase of the game. What bothered me was the apparent disregard for spending a proportionate amount of time on other phases.

 

It's for this reason that I think we can close the gap on :them: quickly. To overtake them will be a bigger challenge though. It's for this same reason that I think he can get a lot more out of the players we have. Small changes to our tactics and training can have a big change to our fortunes.

 

PC is a great salesman. He's great to listen to, and appears to be a really good motivator and disciplinarian. He quickly has you believing in him, much more than most managers I can think of. That rubs off on the players and if they believe in him it'll have an enormous effect. As you say though, he now has to show that he can make the change happen and that it can turn around our season. It's not necessarily that we need to finish second, but we do need to start recreating the fear other teams once had when coming to play us, especially at Ibrox. At the very least I'd hope to be able to watch set pieces against us like any normal supporter, and not through the gaps in my fingers.

[craig 5,199]

If a team is not well drilled in defending against set pieces, it can spell disaster. In that regard, I agree that they are important. However, if you consider that the top teams in any any league tend to only score around 5% - 20% of their goals from set pieces, its plain to see why they are very often not such a focus these days. It's therefore reasonable to expect a team to train for offensive free kicks for up to 20% of the time if was being done proportionately.

 

However to achieve a 20% rate of contribution of goals from set pieces, you need set piece specialists. Remember that this doesn't just apply to the player taking the initial kick/throw, it applies to those around them too. We just don't have that capability within the team, so we can choose to spend the time training those skills, or focus on open play. Unless we do that we will operate towards the 5% end of the spectrum. Focussing on improving chances from open play is much more productive.

 

Teams like Crystal Palace and WBA have a policy of signing players that are set piece specialists. In open play they are a decent side, but they are very successful in set pieces with around 50% of their goals coming from set plays. A team's reliance (or otherwise) on set pieces is also therefore a big part of its recruitment strategy. It's also plays a massive part in the way a team's tactics are trained.

 

It's fair to say that Toral is a very good dead ball player, but we have very few receivers capable of making the most of the chances he can create. If set pieces are to become a bigger part of our game, we are going to have to train or recruit for this purpose. Until then, we can train in offensive set pieces but it won't make a massive difference for a long time.

 

PC knows this though, but it won't stop him from quite rightly making us a better organised unit when defending against them.

 

It's perhaps also of interest to note that in amateur leagues, the proportion of goals scored from set pieces increases to between 30% and 80% (believe it or not). I've not looked into this so much, but I imagine this is due to the defensive frailties rather than the ingenuity of the set piece 'specialists'.

 

That is only looking at offensive set pieces though. Our defensive set pieces have been appalling for the whole of Warburton's tenure. If you are shipping goals from the same situations you need to practice prevention. MW didn't seem to do that. Seems Pedro has his finger on the pulse in that regard already.

[craig 5,199]

Good analysis Gaffer, I am much more interested in our ability to defend set plays than our offensive contribution. Under Warburton with Wilson & Kiernan at the back it felt like every corner was like a penalty and it only had to be good delivery for a goal to come from it. We certainly conceded more than 20% of goals from set plays (or it felt like it anyway!).

 

The one thing I pulled MW up for on day one and continued throughout was his naive notion that he didn't look at the opponents, it was about what we did. This was fairly evident in our defending during his tenure.

 

Like MW however, Pedro is on a total charm offensive with all the right words and phrases, so let's hope he has more walk than talk.

 

It was a poor Hamilton team admittedly TB, but we looked far more solid at the back a week past Saturday - they were limited to one overhead kick from Crawford just after we scored, and it was an easy save for Foderingham. Easiest game all season for the keeper. So whilst you are absolutely right that Pedro is on a charm offensive and even though it was just one game - I see more substance to him having had very little time with them than we saw from MW this whole season - Murty needs to take a chunk of credit for that too right enough.

[Scott7 5,392]

We've struggled to no avail against umpteen other poor teams. Accies was almost relaxing.

[jhunter 0]

If a team is not well drilled in defending against set pieces, it can spell disaster. In that regard, I agree that they are important. However, if you consider that the top teams in any any league tend to only score around 5% - 20% of their goals from set pieces, its plain to see why they are very often not such a focus these days. It's therefore reasonable to expect a team to train for offensive free kicks for up to 20% of the time if was being done proportionately.

 

However to achieve a 20% rate of contribution of goals from set pieces, you need set piece specialists. Remember that this doesn't just apply to the player taking the initial kick/throw, it applies to those around them too. We just don't have that capability within the team, so we can choose to spend the time training those skills, or focus on open play. Unless we do that we will operate towards the 5% end of the spectrum. Focussing on improving chances from open play is much more productive.

 

Teams like Crystal Palace and WBA have a policy of signing players that are set piece specialists. In open play they are a decent side, but they are very successful in set pieces with around 50% of their goals coming from set plays. A team's reliance (or otherwise) on set pieces is also therefore a big part of its recruitment strategy. It's also plays a massive part in the way a team's tactics are trained.

 

It's fair to say that Toral is a very good dead ball player, but we have very few receivers capable of making the most of the chances he can create. If set pieces are to become a bigger part of our game, we are going to have to train or recruit for this purpose. Until then, we can train in offensive set pieces but it won't make a massive difference for a long time.

 

PC knows this though, but it won't stop him from quite rightly making us a better organised unit when defending against them.

 

It's perhaps also of interest to note that in amateur leagues, the proportion of goals scored from set pieces increases to between 30% and 80% (believe it or not). I've not looked into this so much, but I imagine this is due to the defensive frailties rather than the ingenuity of the set piece 'specialists'.

 

we're not a top team

[Gaffer 1,665]

we're not a top team

 

It's all relative and in our league we are a top team, so the proportion of goals from set pieces still applies. These proportions apply to the main 64 professional leagues of which we are one.

 

In a broader sense though, we are definitely not a top team. I'm hoping I see it again though in my lifetime.

[pete 2,499]

It's all relative and in our league we are a top team, so the proportion of goals from set pieces still applies. These proportions apply to the main 64 professional leagues of which we are one.

 

In a broader sense though, we are definitely not a top team. I'm hoping I see it again though in my lifetime.

 

I am afraid the SKY\BT\Fox money will have to freeze up.