The Pep merry go round - why has no one replicated it?

Exeter Blue I am here said:
I should have known better than to trust the BBC! I didn’t know they’d included penalties in it. Presumably they included penalties conceded by the other teams as well though?
I think the issue with the corners is that we concede from the same type of corner routine over and over, ie letting an opponent run unimpeded from roughly the penalty spot to the front corner of the 6 yard box, so they’ve got all the momentum in the world to outjump whoever’s covering the near post. Drives me mad, cos you can see it coming a mile off
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The problem with zonal marking is that when it fails, it looks really bad but I believe that it is proven to be more effective than man-marking approach. In either case you have to execute it properly. We need to make sure that one of our defenders is always attacking the ball.

This is the weakest point of what is actually a very effective defensive set-up, the more so when you consider the size of our team. We can improve for sure but getting the numbers conceded from set pieces down much farther ain't going to happen because the numbers of goals we concede are not high.

We have conceded too many goals though so far this season so it is very important not to allow that to become a trend. I am more conservative at heart than Pep so I'd focus very heavily on keeping a few clean sheets in the coming games and being a bit more safety conscious. So I probably would start with a 4-2-3-1 kind of line-up in mid-week and pair Rod and Fern. A nil - nil draw or one -nil win away from home would be a sound foundation for the UCL campaign.
 
OB1 said:
That MotD table had me spitting feathers. Yeah, we conceded the highest percentage of goals from set pieces but we are talking about 13 goals conceded, of which 4 were penalties. Exclude penalties and we conceded one more set piece goal than Liverpool and two than Leicester. Everyone else conceded more.

We have conceded a few from corners recently so there's some work I think to do there, especially getting new boy Rodri to defend that front post. But, I mean even that lazy drunken oaf Yaya could do that.

Did Norwich play out from the back for their second? I thought they won the ball just inside their half and broke on us.

I posted elsewhere, Norwich manged less than 20 touches in our box and not much more in the are around it.

Agree on other stuff about City. I think Raz was tired from carrying the whole England team on his back ;-)

I refuse to discuss the Cult.
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Domenec Torrent was Pep's main man for organising corners. It looks like we really miss him.

In Pep's 3 seasons in Munich, Bayern conceded 7 goals from 470 corners. So, one goal against every 67 corners. That is impressive in isolation but there was progression as well:

2013/2014 - 5 conceded.
2014/2015 - 2 conceded
2015/2016 - 0 conceded.

City last 4 seasons:

15/16 - 8 from 165 corners, 1 conceded every 21 corners (Pelle last season)
16/17 - 4 from 130, 1 every 33 corners
17/18 - 2 from 103, 1 every 52 corners (Torrent's last season and also only 2 conceded from set pieces)
18/19 - 5 from 82, 1 every 16 corners

So Torrent was working his magic but it has been shit since. Hence, why Pep looks to reduce the number of corner kicks given away.

Torrent also far better on the offensive side as well. We scored a respectable 10 from 284 in 17/18 but only 6 from 287 last season.
 
Pablo ZZZ Peroni said:
Domenec Torrent was Pep's main man for organising corners. It looks like we really miss him.

In Pep's 3 seasons in Munich, Bayern conceded 7 goals from 470 corners. So, one goal against every 67 corners. That is impressive in isolation but there was progression as well:

2013/2014 - 5 conceded.
2014/2015 - 2 conceded
2015/2016 - 0 conceded.

City last 4 seasons:

15/16 - 8 from 165 corners, 1 conceded every 21 corners (Pelle last season)
16/17 - 4 from 130, 1 every 33 corners
17/18 - 2 from 103, 1 every 52 corners (Torrent's last season and also only 2 conceded from set pieces)
18/19 - 5 from 82, 1 every 16 corners

So Torrent was working his magic but it has been shit since. Hence, why Pep looks to reduce the number of corner kicks given away.

Torrent also far better on the offensive side as well. We scored a respectable 10 from 284 in 17/18 but only 6 from 287 last season.
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"been shit since"... you know all those stats from previous season don't show the quality of the crosses that were put in. Just sometimes, a cross is just right on an attackers head and there's nowt we can do about it!
 
Pablo ZZZ Peroni said:
Domenec Torrent was Pep's main man for organising corners. It looks like we really miss him.

In Pep's 3 seasons in Munich, Bayern conceded 7 goals from 470 corners. So, one goal against every 67 corners. That is impressive in isolation but there was progression as well:

2013/2014 - 5 conceded.
2014/2015 - 2 conceded
2015/2016 - 0 conceded.

City last 4 seasons:

15/16 - 8 from 165 corners, 1 conceded every 21 corners (Pelle last season)
16/17 - 4 from 130, 1 every 33 corners
17/18 - 2 from 103, 1 every 52 corners (Torrent's last season and also only 2 conceded from set pieces)
18/19 - 5 from 82, 1 every 16 corners

So Torrent was working his magic but it has been shit since. Hence, why Pep looks to reduce the number of corner kicks given away.

Torrent also far better on the offensive side as well. We scored a respectable 10 from 284 in 17/18 but only 6 from 287 last season.
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Bayern had an xGA of 0.04 per defensive shot after a corner in 14/15 and of 0.03 in 15/16 (with Kimmich and Alaba playing central defenders in many matches that season)
We did not have that many players that were strong with headers then - that makes it so special!

You had an xGA of 0.09 in 16/17 and 0.11 in 17/18 and 18/19

(Bayern had an xGA of 0.14 last season - with more tall players in the box than we had with Pep...)

xGA - the equivalent to xG - but for the opponent!

Corners aren't that much about the quality of the crosses but usually more about the players you have in the box. Kroos e.g. is a very good corner taker - but he barely assisted with corners at Munich, never in the national team until we played with 4 central defenders + some tall players in the World Cup, great at Real Madrid with Ramos, CR7, Benzema, Casemiro...
 
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Psychedelic Casual said:
"been shit since"... you know all those stats from previous season don't show the quality of the crosses that were put in. Just sometimes, a cross is just right on an attackers head and there's nowt we can do about it!
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Clearly we aren't shit and there's all sorts of factors involved but there is room to do better, more than I thought.

Not sure Domenec Torrent's absence is the difference. I doubt he has secrets that Pep doesn't know but his absence could be a factor.

At least we dramatically reduced the number of goals conceded from open play last year.
 
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