Have set-piece kings Arsenal really become set-piece strugglers? — SkimNews
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- Arsenal scored a Premier League-high 25 non-penalty set-piece goals last season en route to the title, but seven games into the new campaign they are one of only four sides—alongside Liverpool, Manchester United, and Nottingham Forest—yet to score from a dead ball.
- According to Opta, Arsenal have generated 2.50 expected goals from set-pieces this season, ranking among the Premier League's biggest underperformers on that metric—only Liverpool and Nottingham Forest have underperformed by a larger margin.
- Arsenal's average of 4.7 corners per game is their lowest across the past nine seasons, down 17% from last season's 5.7 and roughly 30% below the nearly seven per game they averaged two campaigns ago.
- Mikel Arteta attributed the drought to bad luck, saying the club "should have scored four and we haven't," citing specific wastefulness including Havertz and Gabriel heading over from Rice deliveries against Nottingham Forest.
- A Premier League clampdown on grappling and blocking at corners is reshaping dead-ball effectiveness league-wide, with a higher share of corners now leading to free-kicks for defending sides rather than shots.
- Arsenal's set-piece xG per game has dropped from 0.56 last season to 0.36 this term, yet open-play numbers have improved—though 37% of last season's goals came from non-penalty set-pieces, leaving a sizable gap for the new approach to fill.
Why it matters: Last season's title-winning formula leaned heavily on dead balls—37% of Arsenal's goals came from non-penalty set-pieces—so the early-season wastefulness and a 17% year-on-year drop in corner volume test whether Mikel Arteta's side can fully replace that output through open play before tougher fixtures expose the gap.
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