Best way to defend Arsenal’s sh*thouse corners? | Or most other corners

Pogue Mahone

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In a world where referees don’t do their job and Arsenal are allowed to continue to bum rush opponents every time a corner is taken, what’s the best way to deal with them?

Defending zonally - which basically everyone does these days - seems like the worst option. That way you have a bunch of defenders all standing still when the rolling maul barges into them.

I wonder if the best way to deal with it is going old school, man to man, marking?

Any other more creative ideas?
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
In a world where referees don’t do their job and Arsenal are allowed to continue to bum rush opponents every time a corner is taken, what’s the best way to deal with them?

Defending zonally - which basically everyone does these days - seems like the worst option. That way you have a bunch of defenders all standing still when the maul barges into them.

I wonder if the best way to deal with it is going old school, man to man, marking?

Any other more creative ideas?
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Just stand in a line and block their runs. It’s really easy. Have 6/7 players line up at the back post and face the ball, let them run in to you and see what happens. The defenders are not obliged to move to someone runs at them from behind
 
Line up on the opposite side and charge bulldog style. May result in the occasional penalty.
 
Stand opposite them mosh-pit style and run into them like they run into you

The ref won't have a clue what to do in the resulting carnage


Edit: great minds
Smores said:
Line up on the opposite side and charge bulldog style. May result in the occasional penalty.
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Make "being a dickhead" illegal. That would remove all their fans and then also (possibly) the necessary hype around the corners.
 
Has to be man to man

Playing them in the cup so let's see what our coaches come up with
 
As has been said, probably make some sort of wall and force a foul as they attack the ball. Or maybe just simply study what they do and replicate it? You are allowed to improve on your own set pieces. We (Chelsea) are shit at them and it’s always pisses me off that we clearly dont do enough about it on the training ground. There’s nothing “shithousey” about it. They have simply found an alternative way to score goals when teams are defending well with a low block or strong mid block. We all laughed when they couldn’t defend against Stoke. Yeah, it’s frustrating.
 
K Stand Knut said:
Just stand in a line and block their runs. It’s really easy. Have 6/7 players line up at the back post and face the ball, let them run in to you and see what happens. The defenders are not obliged to move to someone runs at them from behind
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Should definitely be more of this.

I also notice they run in goal side which obviously gives them an advantage.

Something I'd like to see if we do go zonal is start on the goal line or even just behind it and attack the zonal area where we'd normally be stood. That gives us a 2 or 3 step run up instead of being stood still.
 
Instruct your players to fall over the moment they feel contact. If Hojlund had done this yesterday both could have been disallowed.
 
I thought man to man would make conventional sense. More obscure options would be to to do the exact inverse and run at them or have all the players perform a daisy chain around the goal or something. Also players need to start making a meal of any contact, there's no such thing as honesty in football
 
Don't concede any corners is a good tactic. Having a good forward-line capable of keeping the ball in the opposition half helps enormously, as does not playing the corner-flag in your own half, Marcus.

Thought Onana did well with corners last night. The second goal was an absolute piss-take, mind.
 
Crostien said:
Don't concede any corners is a good tactic. Having a good forward-line capable of keeping the ball in the opposition half helps enormously, as does not playing the corner-flag in your own half, Marcus.

Thought Onana did well with corners last night. The second goal was an absolute piss-take, mind.
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You could be onto something here. If we tell the players to score goals and not conceed any we should win every game we play.
 
Rood said:
Has to be man to man

Playing them in the cup so let's see what our coaches come up with
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The problem is they have ways to beat pure man to man as well. That said I do think it's better than going purely zonal like United did yesterday.

Chelsea did very well against them with a mixed system - the 3 or 4 best headers in our team were set up zonally, everyone else focused more on blocking / diverting the Arsenal runs instead of trying to contest for the ball.
 
Man to man looks like it would make most sense for that specific routine but it's not like they can't just pick out another one to hurt you. They scored loads from near post flickons a while back, then they had this routine that somehow always led to a far post tap in or shot across the 6-yard box, now it's the rolling maul you describe.

You need to have a different answer for all of those, really. With ourselves being in the position we are, we were never really likely to have that yesterday.
 
Jaae said:
Instruct your players to fall over the moment they feel contact. If Hojlund had done this yesterday both could have been disallowed.
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Yes, especially the Spain national team has great success with this
 
First of all, don't have your manager gush about how amazing they are. That just gives refs free rein to allow them to continue to foul in future games against us.

Amorim needs to learn how to be a whinging cnut and put the doubt in the ref's minds from now on.
 
didz said:
Man to man looks like it would make most sense for that specific routine but it's not like they can't just pick out another one to hurt you. They scored loads from near post flickons a while back, then they had this routine that somehow always led to a far post tap in or shot across the 6-yard box, now it's the rolling maul you describe.

You need to have a different answer for all of those, really. With ourselves being in the position we are, we were never really likely to have that yesterday.
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Yeah it was like a deer caught in headlights tbf, I was quite surprised to see just how unprepared your lot were. And Rashford trying that trick there was just mental.
 
If you play any team with good delivery and give 6 free players a run at the ball and they'll cause you trouble from set pieces all day.

Defending teams need to wise up, exaggerate their falls, moan to referees etc. They're getting away with third man blocks, which if you did it in midfield it's obstruction.

Teams also need to defend better, not just the ball, but mix zonal and man for man marking, protecting the area around the keeper and stopping the movement. You can do a lot of defending when the ball is dead. Get tight, grab shirts, hands, stand on toes, pinching etc. Break their sight, focus and on their movement for the ball. Generally just be cynical and annoy the feck out of them to take their attention away from their role.
 
Need a man at the near post who is good at heading/clearing the ball away. RVP was really good at that, we used him a lot in that position.
 
Ayoba said:
Need a man at the near post who is good at heading/clearing the ball away. RVP was really good at that, we used him a lot in that position.
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We’ve always tended to have strikers who do a good job at defending that near post. RvP is a good example. Lukaku won a lot of near post headers too. We’re suffering from our strikers being rubbish in the air at both ends of the pitch.
 
Crostien said:
Don't concede any corners is a good tactic. Having a good forward-line capable of keeping the ball in the opposition half helps enormously, as does not playing the corner-flag in your own half, Marcus.

Thought Onana did well with corners last night. The second goal was an absolute piss-take, mind.
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Not conceding any corners is a stretch, but generally you're correct.

The teams that conceded the fewest corners in the league last season were Arsenal, City and Liverpool, because avoiding conceding corners is a direct result of the control the best teams exert on the game. Meanwhile, the teams who conceded the most corners were Forest, Sheffield United and (right at the bottom) Manchester United.

Arsenal averaged around 7 corners per game last season. Obviously you need a plan to deal with their corners, but no plan any set-piece coach comes up will offset conceding nearly double that average as we did yesterday.
 
sullydnl said:
Not conceding any corners is a stretch, but generally you're correct.

The teams that conceded the fewest corners in the league last season were Arsenal, City and Liverpool, because avoiding conceding corners is a direct result of the control the best teams exert on the game. Meanwhile, the teams who conceded the most corners were Forest, Sheffield United and (right at the bottom) Manchester United.

Arsenal averaged around 7 corners per game last season. Obviously you need a plan to deal with their corners, but no plan any set-piece coach comes up will offset conceding nearly double that average as we did yesterday.
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It becomes self perpetuating, if you’re defending the corners poorly. Arsenal won a lot of corners from their corners. The first half was as evenly matched as could be. Arsenal created basically nothing in open play - and had less possession than us - but racked up a bunch of corners all the same.
 
Oranges038 said:
If you play any team with good delivery and give 6 free players a run at the ball and they'll cause you trouble from set pieces all day.

Defending teams need to wise up, exaggerate their falls, moan to referees etc. They're getting away with third man blocks, which if you did it in midfield it's obstruction.

Teams also need to defend better, not just the ball, but mix zonal and man for man marking, protecting the area around the keeper and stopping the movement. You can do a lot of defending when the ball is dead. Get tight, grab shirts, hands, stand on toes, pinching etc. Break their sight, focus and on their movement for the ball. Generally just be cynical and annoy the feck out of them to take their attention away from their role.
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I can't see us getting away with any of that, especially at the Emirates. We have one player who gets in the referee's ear consistently and he gets lambasted for it every week. Imagine what happens when the whole team goes full Simeone?
 
didz said:
I can't see us getting away with any of that, especially at the Emirates. We have one player who gets in the referee's ear consistently and he gets lambasted for it every week. Imagine what happens when the whole team goes full Simeone?
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But you only do it when the ball is dead, referee will step in to break it, it slows it down, disrupts their movement and their players lose focus.

Referee can't give a foul against you for it when the ball is dead.
 
It annoyed the hell out of me. To make matters worse the ref warned our players about getting close and physical, so there wasn't much they could really do while Arsenal ran all over and into us. Defenders basically can't do anything, even blocking these days is a 50/50.
 
Oranges038 said:
But you only do it when the ball is dead, referee will step in to break it, it slows it down, disrupts their movement and their players lose focus.

Referee can't give a foul against you for it when the ball is dead.
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Yes, they can.
 
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