Aaron Briggs Is Set Free

Liverpool set piece coach Aaron Briggs has left the club. The Reds' record in his time was poor but how much of that was his fault?

The Aaron Briggs era at Liverpool is over. Paul Joyce of The Times broke the news this morning that the 38-year-old set piece coach has left the club.

“Liverpool’s continuing susceptibility means the club felt that an intervention was required and a mutual decision was taken to see Briggs move on,” Joyce wrote, also noting that: “Responsibility for set pieces will now rest with [Arne] Slot and the rest of the coaching staff, including Sipke Hulshoff and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.”

It will be interesting to see if there is something equivalent to a ‘new manager bounce’ when it comes to the Reds’ set plays. If that happens, it could easily be for the same reason as when results improve after a change of manager, namely that an unusually bad run ends when it might have done anyway. There isn’t always a need for a fan-appeasing sacrificial lamb.

Because make no mistake, Liverpool - and by extension, Briggs - have been unlucky when it comes to defending dead ball situations. Granted, you can’t really sugarcoat a record of 12 conceded in the Premier League by the new year when the Reds averaged 9.9 per season across the preceding 16 campaigns. There have been some strange outcomes, though, with 5.97 set piece xG more than doubling in actual goals. This issue was analysed in relation to corners specifically earlier this month:

https://www.andrewbeasleyfootball.com/p/liverpool-defending-set-pieces-a-corner-to-be-turned

Both Arsenal and Liverpool have allowed 0.41 expected goals from corners for every 10 which the opposition take. Yet the goals conceded totals for the sides are two and seven respectively. The Reds’ figure for xG per 10 corners isn’t much worse than when they were a 97 point, Champions League-winning behemoth, perhaps the most defensively sound iteration of Jürgen Klopp’s Reds. Yet the goals are through the roof this term.

The other quirk of the record is that none of the 12 set play goals Liverpool have allowed has been assisted by the dead ball delivery itself. Not once has the first contact following the corner, free-kick or throw-in steered the ball into the Reds’ net. Briggs would be within his rights to highlight the defenders have been in the right places, it is what has happened on the second ball, which he can’t control, that has sealed his fate.

But perhaps it is the prevailing wind in English football that has blown him through the exit door. From 2009/10 to 2024/25, 34.6 per cent of Premier League set piece goals had a direct assist. That figure stands at 23.7 this season. For many sides, the idea is not only to produce an elaborate plan that pays dividends through first contact. Why go to that trouble when you can create some chaos before prodding the ball over the line somehow?

Even Arsenal only have two set piece assists in 2025/26, Manchester City just one. The latter’s was the simple pass Bernardo Silva played to Nico González before his long-range strike was deflected into the Liverpool goal. Because of course it was.

Whatever legitimate sympathy you may have for Aaron Briggs when it comes to the defence will likely be washed away once we look at the attacking numbers.

Again, that was covered to some extent earlier this season and, again, there was an unusual gap between expected outcome and result. The main oddity in 2024/25 was that the Reds had scored four set piece goals at the end of match 31, only to then net one in each of the next six games. They ended the season in line with xG, merely taking a circuitous route to get there.

It’s hard not to wonder if this outcome helped Briggs turn his temporary set piece role into a permanent one last summer (as I discussed with Josh Williams on the latest episode of Distance Covered). Even a club as data-driven as Liverpool might have been swayed by a recent upturn in performance when their efforts to appoint an external candidate proved unsuccessful in the summer.

There has perhaps been some misfortune with attacking corners in 2025/26 just as at the back. The xG rate is better than in a title-winning season, yet it’s taking almost 100 corners to produce a goal.

However, without leaning on a cliché like ‘you make your own luck’, it’s fair to say Liverpool have not been doing enough with their dead ball situations. If we extend the cumulative set piece graph to include the whole of the Arne Slot era, we find that this season has begun in similar fashion to 2024/25. The output is again trailing the process.

Such things are an inevitable possibility. The most striking aspect is the trend of the xG line being remarkably straight. After the 12th game of last season, Liverpool were averaging 0.25 expected goals per game thanks to set pieces; they’ve generated 0.26 over this whole period. As marginal a fall as it may be, the Reds have regressed from 0.27 in 2024/25 to 0.24 this season.

They were not productive enough in the first place, so to drop off following Briggs securing the full time post is damning. Liverpool have produced 10.4 xG through set pieces in their 38 Premier League matches in 2025 while Leeds have amassed 9.2 in their 18 top flight games. That makes you feel better ahead of Thursday, doesn’t it?

If anything highlights English football’s separation from the rest of Europe, it’s that the Reds currently lead the Champions League for set play xG. Their total of 3.7 in six European games was only equalled in the league during match 16, against Brighton. Funnily enough, it occurred when Hugo Ekitike headed Mohamed Salah’s corner into the Kop end net for the only directly assisted dead ball goal in a Liverpool league game this season.

The French forward is the Reds’ third top player for set play xG this term, behind Ibrahima Konaté and Virgil van Dijk. Combining their figures tallies 2.17 expected goals, less than either João Pedro (2.46) or Casemiro (2.28) have enjoyed. If you can’t even produce a league average xG per shot from someone as dominant in the air as van Dijk, you’re probably not very good at designing set piece routines.

The net result of all these numbers is Liverpool having a set piece goal difference of -9 in the league this season when the xG difference is only -1.7. Unfortunate, yes, but a side that dominates games should be in the black by a decent margin on set play process.

That’s more than enough of a concern to justify a change. The challenge for Briggs’ (permanent) successor is to lift the level of the attack, as there’s a fair chance the defensive record will start to correct itself regardless.