The Evolution of Liverpool's Set Pieces: Arne Slot's First Year and Beyond

Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool did one thing with corners, Arne Slot's Reds quite another. A newly appointed analyst may push things further.

Liverpool have hired a new set piece analyst. Lewis Mahoney has left Southampton to work alongside Aaron Briggs, who is now a dedicated set piece coach after completing the role alongside other duties last season. The new duo have much work to do.

The Reds had a strange campaign with dead ball situations in Arne Slot’s first year in charge. They finished the 2024/25 Premier League with 10 set play goals, fewer than in any of the nine Jürgen Klopp seasons. Liverpool averaged 15.4 a year under their former manager, peaking with 20 in 2018/19.

It wasn’t just the goal drop that was unusual. They pivoted from ice cold to red hot as the season reached it’s conclusion. Slot’s men were almost 3.5 goals behind expectation with only seven games to go, then finished broadly at par. The cumulative goals versus expected goals graph highlights the oddness of the campaign.

Expanding this data across all competitions puts them at 15 from 15.4 xG, maintaining the theme. The issue was not of converting chances in the long term, it was of not creating enough in the first place.

By using Understat data we can look back at the underlying set play numbers from before even Klopp came in. Liverpool amassed 11.7 expected goals on their model last season, their fewest since 2017/18. More notably, their xG per shot in these situations (0.09) was last lower under Brendan Rodgers.

A recent article in The Athletic presented another interesting way to look at the issue: expected goals per 100 corners. With an average of 3.13 last season, the Reds ranked 12th out of the 17 Premier League clubs that remain in the division this term.

Mahoney’s former side Southampton are not one of them, so their figures were not disclosed. However, they were a little ahead of Liverpool on this metric midway through the last campaign (as per the below chart). With better set piece takers aiming for Virgil van Dijk, the former Saints analyst should be able to generate a greater level of dead ball offence.

Southampton scored four goals through non-corner set plays in 2024/25, a total Liverpool only bettered in one of the last six seasons. It’s also as many as the Reds netted in the previous two campaigns combined.

There’s every chance Mahoney doesn’t simply transfer his previous set piece play book to his new side. Opposition analysts will know what to expect. Even so, we can learn from the dead ball offence he built that arguably outperformed Liverpool.