Chelsea legend Didier Drogba claims he has the answer on how to stop Arsenal scoring from set-pieces – and it’s remarkably simple.
The Gunners have become set-piece specialists over the past couple of years with no team in Europe having scored more than their 22 goals from corners since the start of last season.
Their 2-0 midweek victory over Manchester United that kept them right in the thick of the Premier League title race saw Jurrien Timber and William Saliba both score from corners. That led Arsenal fans to sing “set-piece again, ole, ole, ole.”
The pinpoint deliveries from corner-takers Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka seem to cause even the best defences issues and they have become a real weapon for Mikel Arteta’s side, under the tutelage of set-piece coach Nicolas Jover.
When asked to explain his success delivering corners, Rice explained: “It’s just seeing clips and I know the weight I need to put on the ball and it’s just about repetition. I put a few good balls in [against Man Utd] and could’ve had a couple of assists.
But Drogba, who scored 104 Premier League goals during a career where he was renowned for his physicality and was pretty effective in the air himself, has come up with what he believes is a simple solution to stop the Gunners in their tracks.
Commenting on an Instagram post about Arsenal’s corner routines by the ‘footballmeta’ account, Drogba wrote: “Put someone in front of the corner taker 10m away and tell him to jump so the corner taker won’t be able to deliver a good ball.
“Then you ask your goalkeeper to take all the sloppy balls and ask your defenders to protect him.”
He followed the comment with a shrugging emoji, suggesting he feels that limiting their effectiveness should be no big deal.
Arsenal are currently third in the Premier League table, seven points adrift of leaders Liverpool, alhough Arteta bristled slightly at the suggestion that they are becoming a set-piece team and certainly any comparisons to Tony Pulis’s Stoke side of the lates 2000s and early 2010s would be premature.
“We want to be very dangerous and very effective from every angle and every phase of play,” said Arteta after the win over Manchester United.
“Last year we scored the most goals in the history of this football club, not because of only set-pieces but because of a lot of things that we have. We want to create individual and magic moments, too.”
