Corners (again)

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Slightly off subject, but does anyone else find Jordan Henderson makes them angry when he takes a corner? Well in general he makes me angry, but more so when he takes a corner. WTF is he doing with his hands?

 

[TheBlueDune]

The average is 1/46 or 2.17%.

Any idea how many have we conceded from our own corner with breakdown of play and opposition break away to score?

 

[aguero93:20]

Slightly off subject, but does anyone else find Jordan Henderson makes them angry when he takes a corner? Well in general he makes me angry, but more so when he takes a corner. WTF is he doing with his hands?

Counting.

 

[domalino]

I think we can say we're doing pretty well.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

Thanks for taking the time to post this - very interesting.

As to the 30 we have allegedly scored? Well I don't know what games I've been watching, but genuinely I would have said it was less than 10. I think the "in 3 or 4 touches" bit is relevant. I wonder whether "5 or 6" is being included, or "9 or 10". I do find 30 goals in 3 seasons very hard to believe, but there you go.

I dug up previous research and the “3 or 4 touches” reference was from a blog. The actual OPTA definition as to what constitutes a goal from a corner is :

"Set Piece goals/attempts are those where the ball starts from a dead ball situation such as a corner, a free kick, a penalty or a Throw-in and results in a shot before the phase of play has broken down into open play. The exact point at which it becomes open play is usually clear but set pieces which are cleared and then the ball is put straight back into the penalty area are still deemed to be part of the set piece as the defending team is still positioned to deal with the set play."

City scored 10 goals from corners last season. From memory 4 were from 1st touch – Kompany direct headers against WBA and Chelsea, Otamendi against Norwich and the YaYa volley at Watford. Overall, and this is an estmate, I imagine the average for 1st touch goals from corners is about 1.5 times per 100.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

There's an interesting read here about how Simeone and Atletico managed to get a corner conversion % of better than 10% (5.2 corners per game, better than 1 goal from corners every 2 games)

https://13steps.co/2015/01/30/diego-simeones-atletico-corner-analysis/

The stat is a bit skewed there. They scored 14 from 195 corners in 2014/2015 La Liga. So the conversion rate is 7.2% which obviously is still superb.

They dropped to 8 goals from 207 corners in 2015/2016 and a conversion rate of 3.86% Still excellent and very similar to City in 15/16 with 10 from 257 and a conversion rate of 3.89% :)

The article is excellent - reinforces how much thought goes into trying to make effective use of corners and also how defending teams adapt.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

Apparently we do them better than anyone apart from West Brom.

I think the issue is that we only watch every game our team plays. 3% therefore means we score 3 from every hundred taken and we automatically assume we are shite and everyone else must be better when watching corners headed in during highlights.

Nail on the head and sums it up perfectly for me.

Just to expand on it some more the 3% is an average. It is the same in the European Leagues as well and it has not changed much for years. In the big 4 European Leagues in 15/16 there were a total of 14828 corners and just 442 goals scored using the OPTA definition as above. That’s one hell of a lot of failure and basically everyone is shit at corners. City have just been less shit than everyone else except West Brom for the last 3 seasons.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

In terms of crosses fired over, I think you're right, although even well organised defences make mistakes and disorganised ones make more.

But given how much Pep values possession, I can't see the sense in lumping it in and "hoping" and probably having a 50% chance of losing the ball. Surely we'd be better off passing it short and drawing the opposition out so we can open up gaps and try to develop things that way. Just lumping it across seems about as "non-Pep-like" as the keeper hoofing it up field.

Lumping it in is fine despite our dwarves. Reading various stuff with direct quotes from Pep, he is obsessed with winning the 2nd ball. Not just in the middle of the park to regain possession but in an attacking context from corners and crosses where the aim isn’t neccesarily to win the 1st ball against giants but to attack or pick up the 2nd ball which can directly lead to a goal scoring opportunity. Whilst doing this he will also look to protect against the counterattack.

Mixing it up with short balls because we have dwarves is fine as well.

The reality of our corner stats this season is that we have completed more accurate corners than any other team this season and are 1 of only 3 teams (Chelsea and Bournemouth) who have over a 50% accuracy completion rate. Basically, this is indicative that we mix it up and short ball corners have been part of the armoury not just the last 2 games but all season.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

I think we can say we're doing pretty well.

HaHa - brilliant.

Zonal defending is the best :)

And the attention to detail. Just on corners alone, as part of the pre-match analysis him and his team will look in detail at 50+ of our opponents previous corners. First 45 games with Bayern they only conceded 3 goals from corners.

This thread is about scoring from corners and there will be a similar attention to detail. It is not always perceived like that because of the very nature of corners is that goals are few and far to come by.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Sorry I asked ;-)