Liverpool Defending Set Pieces: A Corner To Be Turned
Liverpool dropped two points at Leeds thanks to a goal from a corner, to go with costly set play goals against Crystal Palace, Manchester United, Brentford, Nottingham Forest...
My best pal, a 14-year-old rescue dog called Marley, died on Saturday. You can read about him here. So while every Liverpool related newsletter, podcast, blog and video channel will be unpicking the Mohamed Salah mess this week, I can’t engage with that at all. I would struggle to care less. Instead, here’s something I had already been meaning to write about, which remains hugely pertinent after the draw with Leeds anyway.
Up the Reds. Rest well, Marley.
The Premier League of 2025/26 is a battleground of set pieces, with goals from corners, free-kicks and throw-ins shaping results and narratives week after week. But are they actually as prevalent as we think? It depends where you draw the line.
There have been an average of 0.77 set play goals per game in the top flight this season, more than in any of the preceding 16 campaigns for which WhoScored has data. That rate drops to 0.62 if you count from the start of the Arne Slot era. The average in the season before that, 2023/24? 0.62.
Set pieces have become more dominant because total goals have dropped off a touch. Those that come via dead ball situations represent a bigger share of the total than ever before. Liverpool know this better than most.
Since 2009/10, set plays are responsible for 21.8 per cent of Premier League goals. That figure stands at 27.3 this season. For the Reds, 10 of the 24 goals they have conceded in 2025/26 fit this bill, 41.7 per cent of their total. The rate is even higher for Arsenal (44.4), though it’s far less of an issue for a team that has let in fewer goals in any situation than Liverpool have thanks to set pieces alone.
2016/17 was the last time the Reds conceded more in a whole season. They’ve equalled their yearly average from across the last 16 campaigns inside 15 matches this term.
Except that it isn’t really 15 that are responsible for the bulk of it. Eight of the goals have occurred in the last nine matches. For five of the six full seasons between 2017/18 and 2022/23, Liverpool conceded eight times or fewer in total from set pieces. Aaron Briggs out?
The recent eight include three opening goals, two winners and an equaliser at Elland Road on Saturday. Never mind the volume feel the cost, or something.
Ao Tanaka’s goal for Leeds had no assist, like those against Liverpool for Will Osula, Ismaïla Sarr, Dango Outtara, Murillo and Morgan Gibbs-White before it. Teams don’t need complex routines, they can just launch the ball into the Reds’ box to exploit the chaos which unfolds. Even when there has been an official assist, it hasn’t come from the set piece itself. It’s a second phase problem.
Does this suggest things should improve if Liverpool's concentration in such situations does likewise? Perhaps, though this does not look a mentally strong team, for very obvious, deeply traumatic reasons. There is thankfully a more justified cause for optimism. The only hope is that it is not too late for this season.
Corners are the easiest brand of set piece to analyse with data. Every one occurs at the attacking end of the pitch with the intention of scoring a goal, which can’t be said for all free kicks or throw-ins.
Our task is made easier by Understat, which shares expected goal statistics for each type of shot situation for the Premier League. Their numbers reveal a severe imbalance for the Reds at corners: 31 shots worth 2.8 xG for no goals scored, 25 worth 2.3 for five conceded. The average value of a shot is equal at both ends, the outcomes considerably different.
Over half of the expected goals conceded from corners came through Sarr (0.81) and Tanaka (0.53) alone, again suggesting fortune should turn. As the other 23 shots added up to 0.98 xG, defending corners has been like most aspects of Liverpool’s season; fine until it very much isn’t.
To assess this fully, we must compare their efforts to those of the 19 other top flight clubs. Despite just three teams conceding more Premier League goals from corners than Liverpool this season, just five have a lower expected tally. The division scoring 79 corner goals against 69.03 xG again suggests we are living through a period of volatility, or perhaps extreme efficiency by the experts.
While a corner is a corner is a corner, the number of them that each team faces or takes varies. Liverpool need 2.5 to generate a shot this term, a little below the Premier League par of 2.4 in 2025/26. However, their opponents only have an attempt at goal once each 3.1 corners, a rate only Newcastle (3.2) and (sorry, who?) Wolves (3.6) are bettering.
We can also assess expected goals per 10 corners, the average for which is 0.47 this season. Liverpool are again below average offensively (0.36) but are one of the best sides defensively (0.30). The crosses that are routinely headed clear by (most likely) Virgil van Dijk are taken for granted and swiftly forgotten, before the ball occasionally bounces through to an attacker who scores. A football fan has few confirmation biases firmer than their opinion of their team’s record with set plays.
Oh, look. The Leeds side that inflicted the Reds’ latest misery are the worst side in the division for xG per 10 corners at the defensive end. Liverpool generated just 0.03 xG via that brand of set play on Saturday, meaning Daniel Farke’s men were even more disastrous before the champions rolled into town.
But we’re mainly here to bemoan (or forgive) their defensive output. The Reds of 2025/26 don’t just have a good record for xG per corners this season, they also compare favourably with their predecessors.
As random as the output can be, it shouldn’t be feasible to give up so little yet pay so costly a price for it as is happening this term. Unfortunately that seems to be the case in so many ways for Liverpool as they stumble from one bad result to the next.
Every single weakness is picked at until it bleeds. The outlook for 2025/26, at least in the league, is starting to look terminal. But for the multiple areas which require improvement, defending corners is far from the most pressing.
Premier League data correct up to matches played on December 7.
Thanks to everyone who left a nice comment about Marley on the last chat thread.
Re the defending corners, it's arguably more frustrating that the data looks good... if it was horrendous, we'd have to accept all the goals that are going in. It's a season of moments and the debit balance is hurting hard.
Sorry to hear about Marley.