Do ‘ugly’ Arsenal play just for corners? What stats show | OneFootball

Few football fans need telling that Arsenal are nigh unstoppable from corners, and it’s safe to say they’ve attracted critics.

With the Premier League leaders’ 19 goals from dead ball situations, 16 of them from corners, ranking highest among top flight teams, some fans have been left frustrated by what they say is a reluctance to score from open play, and dictate proceedings inside their own half or using dead ball situations instead.

Others, including Brighton manager Fabian Hürzeler, have complained that Arsenal make use of corners to reduce the amount of time the ball spends active, which in total has amounted to over two hours of football this season.

After the Gunners had put two past Chelsea from corners to make up for their inefficiency in open play at the start of the month, former striker and manager Chris Sutton had this to say on BBC Radio Five Live: “Set-piece Arsenal, again. I think they are going to win it. If they get over the line, will they be the ugliest Premier League-winning team in history? The performance wasn’t there.”

Mikel Arteta was quick to rebuke Sutton’s comments in his post-match interview, the manager stressing that his team were free to play how the game allowed them to, “and against Chelsea“, he said, “you know exactly the game you’re going to play.”

Is it Arsenal’s game plan to get as many corners as possible? FromTheSpot tries to find an answer.

Where on the pitch Arsenal dominate

Corners are most likely when your opponent is in possession close to the byline either side of goal. That being said, a reasonable way to investigate whether Arsenal try to force corners is to look at which areas of the pitch they dominate.

The graph below shows areas of the pitch where Arsenal have registered a clear majority of touches on the ball over the course of this Premier League season, or a proportion of 55% of the touches or higher.

There are some areas of the field, like the opposition penalty area highlighted pink, that no team is ever expected to do this. But the purple regions – indicating where the Gunners had the majority of touches – show the opposite.

Source: Opta Analyst

Unsurprisingly, Arteta’s side have seen 55% of touches on the left edge of the penalty area, and 59% on the right, and also dominate the ball in the wide areas of their opponent’s half. But what’s most interesting is that, by Opta Analyst’s metric, it’s exclusive to these areas of the pitch.

Once roughly between 35 and 20 yards from goal, Arsenal have just over half the share of touches in either channel, 51% on the left and 53% on the right, making those areas contested.

Their share of touches decreases further the narrower the ball travels, to two fifths when directly in front of goal. While this wouldn’t raise many eyebrows in an evenly-matched game, where both teams will naturally dominate the touches in those areas anyway, Arsenal have the fourth highest average possession in the Premier League.

What this shows is a conscious effort from Arsenal, a team that spends a lot of time inside opposition territory and ranks joint-bottom for backward passes with Crystal Palace, to build attacks that end up in areas that you win the most corners from.

But a more detailed analysis of what has happened in these battlegrounds is necessary to say that Arsenal prefer these areas knowing a corner is as likely as creating a tap in. Two examples from this calendar year stick out, due to the decisions that the Arsenal players make before and at the moment they get there.

Example one: Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea, 21st minute

The first, pictured below, is taken from the lead up to Arsenal’s opening goal in their 2-1 win over Chelsea at the Emirates, after which Sutton asked listeners whether they would be considered the “ugliest” Premier League winners.

Constructed using pictures from Sky Sports Football

Swedish striker Viktor Gyökeres drops deep to collect the first pass in the sequence, drawing out Trevor Chalobah, and hold up the ball until the opportunity for a forward pass emerges. He then picks out Saka, who spots right-back Jurrien Timber on a clever inverted run in behind Jarrell Hato, knowing Chalobah has ground to make up.

Arriving at the right hand edge of the box, he chooses to attempt a cross despite it being largely vacant. Martin Zubimedi had only just made it to the line of the 18 yard box, with Eberechi Eze further behind, Gyökeres out of the picture, and no guarantee that Trossard is able to meet it at the back post before it’s cleared, leaves the area, Robert Sánchez intervenes.

What’s the end result? Enzo Fernández diverts it behind for a corner, from which William Saliba then heads in.

If his cross wasn’t diverted behind in the first place, fans may well have been left scratching their heads as to why Timber’s delivery wasn’t delayed, or his choice not to hold up the ball and wait for more support to arrive.

Example two: Leeds 0-4 Arsenal, 37th minute

Another opener, this time during the first half of the table toppers’ assured victory at Elland Road and there being more moving parts. The important players here are Rice, Timber for a second time, and Madueke.

Constructed using match footage from Arsenal.com

Arsenal are given a free kick half way inside the Leeds half, and opt to take it quickly rather than attempt a high delivery straight into the danger zone. Declan Rice shifts the ball across to Saliba, who picks out Timber in a pocket of space.

Timber now has three options: one, he tries to thread it through to Zubimendi, who although he made a promising run darting in between two Leeds players might have carried the risk of being offside. Two, he bends a cross into the box, but with the little time he has to make a decision would likely not have worked.

However, it is interesting to note that Gabriel raised his arm, signalling he wanted an early delivery in towards the back post where he was lurking behind Ethan Ampadu, which could suggest it wasn’t an impossible pass to make nor a bad idea to knock it back to Rice to then deliver the cross.

Constructed using match footage from Arsenal.com

Option three, what he eventually goes with, Timber moves the ball out wide to Madueke. This gives the winger a chance to run at Jayden Bogle and try to cut the ball back, low, from the byline on the right. You know what comes next. Bogle gets himself in the way, and Kai Havertz heads in the corner at the near post to give his side the lead.

Once again, this points towards Arsenal getting themselves into the most advantageous positions to either flash the ball right across the face of goal, or end up with a corner instead. With the number of Leeds players in the penalty area as Madueke attempted the cross, the latter may well have been the more likely outcome.

But even if this might be the case, do the Gunners really merit the reputation of playing unattractive football?

Do corners make Arsenal an ‘ugly’ team?

While 39% of Arsenal’s 61 goals in all competitions have come from corners, there are a few important caveats to keep in mind. First is that they lead the Premier League for set piece goals, but not by that much. Manchester United are second with 15, then Newcastle and Spurs are tied in third with 14.

In fact, measuring how many goals teams should have scored from corners with expected goals (xG), Newcastle actually rank top with 16.55 while Arsenal are over a goal below at 15.16 in second. From an xG perspective, the Magpies have created more better chances from corners that they were more likely to score than the Gunners.

Eddie Howe’s men also have more corners per game – 6.58 compared to Arsenal’s 5.74. While this amounts to less time before a corner, there has been little talk of the Magpies efforts to score from corners, which are now seen as more of a dark art courtesy of Arsenal’s craze.

BBC Sport suggested it was actually ironic for the likes of Sutton and Paul Scholes to call Arsenal out on their over-reliance on set pieces, with both Blackburn in 1994/95 and Man United in 2007/08 scoring 35% of their goals that way.

One Arsenal fan told me: “Football is football, set pieces are an art of their own and a lot of people are trying to be good at set pieces because they’re a threat. How can that be ugly football?”

Much of the frustration appears to come from the fact that corners briefly halt to the flow of open play. Earlier this month, OptaJoe revealed the delay of 44 seconds on average before Arsenal take a corner is the longest among all 20 teams. With an average of six corners per game, this would equate roughly to four minutes.

Source: Opta Analyst and Statmuse

The statistic was published off the back of Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over Brighton, whose manager Hürzeler raised questions over the length of time Arsenal take to swing a corner into the box.

Several users on X were quick to rebuke OptaJoe’s interpretation that Arsenal “dawdle” during matches, with one fan writing: “Saka waiting to take a corner whilst the referee is dealing with defenders wrestling with his teammates. Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

Another said: “Also the fastest goal kicks. Lower half of the league for total delays. Be honest. Stop the agenda.”

It’s important to remember that the time delay takes into account any and all causes, including interventions from the referee to break up wrestling matches between corners – as the first user on X was eager to highlight – or substitutions, with tactical changes being common right before a set piece is taken.

Clearly, the Gunners’ approach has proven to be an unwelcome one for many fans, despite a reliance on set-pieces not being a novel concept in English football nor among title winners.

Though if Arsenal are to bring a first Premier League title home since the Invincibles in 2003/04, their fans likely won’t have a care in the world for how they get there.