Let's talk about set pieces: A Premier League recap

Plus some Manchester United thoughts, Brighton in trouble

Author

Ted Knutson
September 15, 2025

Football is back! The good kind, not the non-tournament international pile we’re subjected to early in the season. Autumn leaves are back. Blustery, bone-chilling weather is right around the corner. And WE are back with the usual Monday roundup of an excellent slate of Premier League games.

But first, a quick catchup for those of you who may have tuned out for the last week.

Over on Variance Betting, this week we’re running a refresher on things you need to know to get ready for betting in England again. If you’re new or a relative novice to sports betting, now’s probably the best time to dip into the column, as we have the start of our gambling season kicking off in the Championship, Champions League, and Premier League over the next two weeks.

Also, tomorrow starts… TRANSFER GRADES. This turned out to be many readers’ favourite thing we produced last season, and now they are back. Get hyped!

Finally, shout out to our long-time friend and fan Iain MacIntosh. Iain’s new gig is the Route One podcast. It’s football, fast, no faff, which means it’s never more than 15mins, it’s about all of football, not just the big six and you can listen to it here.

Most takeaways I saw from this match said that Man City weren’t great. And they weren’t.

Technically they gave up thirteen shots and 1.83 expected goals to a Manchester United team that finished 15th last season. But… about 1.5 of those expected goals came after the 83rd minute, when City were already 3-0 up. I have concerns about City’s late game fitness/strategy that has continually bit them in the ass, but this was job done and they looked great doing it like 90% of the time.

On the United side, they have started the season against Arsenal, Fulham, Burnley, and City. Two of the top three, a stingy mid-table side, and a promoted team… and they do look better? Well, minus Luke Shaw, who strapped on ice skates for this match instead of boots. We’re going to have to rename him Look Shaw, because that’s all he could do as Jeremy Doku skipped past over and over again. But there are glimpses of competence about the United squad that didn’t really seem to exist last season.

The area I see improvement is the attack. Basically every metric we look at has improved dramatically year over year, and you’d kind of hope so given the amount of money they spent on that area. But the problem is now a defensive one. Much like United’s general status, they are not a tactical, coherent whole. The defense is riddled with… holes, both from a personnel perspective and on the pitch.

I think Amorim is a bit crazy in staunchly persisting with his tactical ideals, but he is correct when he says they are getting better. It’s just that when it comes to Manchester United™️ everyone expects better to equal good, and they’re not there. It’s still a multi-year rebuilding project, and anyone who suggested otherwise — including the rafts of ex-United players in the media — is fooling themselves.

Technically the Zubimendi goal comes off a corner (the ball was cleared to him), so I guess it’s another goal for Set Piece FC? What a thunderbastard of volley that was. He nearly had a second on a similar volley later in the half. Maybe volleys are underrated in modern football tactics?

I’m delighted to see Arsenal are taking long throws from the start of the season this year. I don’t think they are particularly good at it yet, but long throws are vastly better than the alternative.

Arsenal’s second goal was also sumptuous, but of a different variety. A gorgeous, long forward pass from Calafiori to Eze created a low, first-time cross to the center of the six, and Gyökeres was there to put it away. New signings, new goals… that’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

Arsenal’s third also went to Zubimendi off a worked-and-reversed free kick routine. They signed him to score goals 👀 and that’s what he’s giving them.

It’s notable that Madueke barely features in the highlights, but had five key passes, .90 OBV (Eze was second on Arsenal at .45), earned a couple of fouls and basically had most of Forest’s defenders baffled the entire match. He hasn’t done much shooting for Arsenal thus far (he did at Chelsea), but he’s caused tons of problems for the opposition, especially when played on the right.

Interlude

Michael Caley said something on Bluesky this weekend that I thought was worth digging into:

To start, we need to get back to first principles. A set piece happens because the defense did something to gain advantage by creating it. They made a foul to bring down a player. They kicked the ball across the byline to lessen pressure on their goal. Even a throw-in restart in the final third happens to lessen attacking pressure and let the defense reset.

So the attacking team had an advantage and the defensive team chose to let them have a set piece instead of continuing whatever they were doing in attack. That is the starting point.

Second, defenses are usually holding, blocking, impeding attacking players in any number of ways while defending the set piece. This has been the default standard of how they were defended for ages. Then attacking teams started to scheme plays off of set pieces, including ways to help nullify defensive dark arts. That is the current status.

For every potential rule change, you need to be aware of the consequences of rebalancing. No more holding? Awesome, offensive set piece work will feast if it’s called correctly. Time wasting/time clock (which I agree, should be managed across all phases of the game)? What happens when the defense wastes time for something they already got an advantage in creating? How is it reciprocal?

I get that how teams attack out of set pieces has changed — I was a primary catalyst of this movement! (About 300 people took my set pieces course when I taught it, including half the Premier League.) But the default before now was that everything was skewed to the defense.

Football is an inherently low-scoring game. Any changes in volume of goals scored feels dramatic. However, levelling the playing field only feels weird because of how it was refereed and executed before. We’re inherently conservative this way, and rule changes definitely need to be thought through for potential consequences because basically whatever dumb shit gets put out there willy-nilly, people like me will work through those rules and break them in half.

tl;dr Bitching about set pieces is just what we people feel deserves complaining about right now. Yawn. Bring back the ball boy towels and time clocks of Rory Delap and Tony Pulis.

Welcome back, Jordan Henderson. Hendo made an incredible pass to put Kevin Schade into space for Brentford’s opening goal (aided by a helpful deflection). That happened in minute 35 of what was a pretty tight opening first half. Then came the battering.

Chelsea’s equaliser came from Joao Pedro beating a double-team to knock down a cross. It landed at the feet of Cole Palmer, who easily placed the ball into the corner with his left foot.

Chelsea then went 2-1 up, as Moises Caicedo — who has again been Chelsea’s best player so far this campaign — crushed the ball into the top 90. It came to him via a poor clearance on a Garnacho cross, who celebrated the goal like he’d just won a title.

This is worth noting because the YouTube comments were merciless as Garnacho lost Fabio Carvalho at the far post during the Brentford equalizer. The sequence came from a long throw! that looped to the corner of the near-post box, and then was headed to the far post by Chelsea, but landed at the feet of a Bee and left the GTech buzzing about a late escape.

Chelsea’s next month is going to teach us a lot about who this team actually is, and whether Maresca can make them into more than the sum of their many moving parts.

Two goals for Spurs off corners, including the opener, though the second was more open play. And another goal from a corner was disallowed for a push.

Are Spurs good at set pieces now? It helps to play West Ham. (This is going to be a season-long bit, so get used to it.)

Appreciate the good results when they come this season, Hammers fans, because they will likely be few and far between.

(Also, if you are running/own West Ham and would like to engage consulting services on how to improve here, I am available for a six-figure, short-term gig.) [Not a bit.]

Bournemouth rebuilt half of their squad, and have started the season with 3 wins and 1 defeat, with the only loss coming to the champions? Iraola might just be That Dude.

The other side of the coin is Fabian Hurzeler, who appears to be the anti-Dude. Brighton took a knowing risk in placing him in charge of their deep, talented, but young squad and they have never quite looked cohesive as a unit since he has been there. I’d expect them to make a change in one of the two international breaks coming up unless something dramatic changes.

Not every risk smart teams take pays off, not even for Brighton.

Bournemouth took the lead in the 18th, and usually in situations like that, you see an avalanche of shots from the trailing team. Not here — Bournemouth limited Brighton to six shots total, across the whole match. That’s been the story of the Cherries’ season so far, as the defensive side of the ball has been a rock despite replacing basically everyone.

Brighton did get an equalizer just after half time. This came from a Minteh cross and a Mitoma header? I didn’t know those were a thing.

The Bournemouth came off a penalty, and it’s the sequencing here that continues to show Brighton’s flaws. Dunk had a bad giveaway in possession, then the entire Brighton defense overcommitted to the ball, leaving Evanilson open at the edge of the box, and Hecke brings him down with a dumb tackle. Bournemouth get this despite only committing two players to the attack.

Something constantly doesn’t quite click with Brighton, and these types of mistakes happen far too often.

Yes, this was a nil-nil… BUT!

It was a nil-nil with twenty-seven shots and Everton had twenty of them. Expected goals were 1.88 to .41 for Villa. It was an Unai Emery Special, taking these relegation strugglers from the Midlands and making sure they garnered a point away to David Moyes’ Mighty Everton.

Jack Grealish is happy playing football again and they do long throws, so Everton highlights are basically must see for me now. They created a bunch of near goals from set pieces, and Emi Martinez did a great job in making sure Villa got a point.

One match played for Woltemade, one goal scored. Football is a simple game: buy expensive players, score lots of goals. It’s easy — just ask Man United.

Re: Newcastle, this was their first win of the season, and they were largely in control, though Wolves did stress them at times. The same is true the other way, where Johnstone made an absurd save on a Jacob Murphy shot right on top of him to keep it 0-0. Their opening (and only) goal came in the 30th, from a Murphy cross into a Woltemade header.

I saw some Newcastle fans getting excited about Woltemade possibly being good at headers, and lemme tell ya, that’s not typically how this stuff works. Yes, he’s large, but he has the um… one goal off a head last season. And one goal the season before. Then there are TWO headed goals in 22-23 back at Elversberg in the high stakes 3.Bundesliga.

I’m not saying he won’t score more headed goals in the future! But typically giant guys who have not been great headers of the ball in the past don’t magically develop new scoring skills when reaching the highest level.

Be happy, Magpies, but be cautious.

Before Daniel Farke got promoted, there was talk amongst Leeds brass of whether he was the right head coach to lead them into the Premier League. Then they had an awesome promotion campaign last season and making a change seemed to be impossible, especially as he had finally started to embrace set piece training. (The season they lost under Farke in the playoffs, Leeds had something like 150 corners in a row without scoring. Which potentially cost them an automatic slot and £100m or so in revenue. Eep.)

And now…? Well, the attacking tempo is abysmal, but they’ve played Arsenal, Newcastle, Mighty Everton, and Fulham, so quite a tough start. And in this match, they normally walk away with at least a point 63% of the time. If I’m a Leeds fan, I’d expect them to be boring… but also well clear of the relegation spots for the rest of the season. It’s not exciting, but it’s a pretty good job, and a blueprint replicated by teams that came up and stayed up over and over again.

On the Fulham side… they are also still boring. Maybe Kevin lends some excitement over the space of the season in spite of his name*, but the Silva style will always be practical, not prolific. They got three points here, but it came in 90+4 off the back of one of the worst own goals you will ever see.

Yay for points, meh to everything else.

*Seriously… an exciting Brazilian named Kevin? Seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?

Remember that thing I said a few weeks ago around Crystal Palace and draws? Just the fourteen of them last season, and the three already in four matches this year. Hrm…

To be fair to Palace, they were very good in this match. They just ran into the problem of one Robin Roefs, who was exceptional at keeping the ball out of the goal.

It happens. But the draw problem persists.

—TK

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