Arsenal's set play success should be sustainable

In fact there is a world where maybe MORE should be expected from this team

When you see a team do something like score 20 set play goals, one of the first things you wonder when you are thinking about the next season is “Can this be repeated?”

That is a question that is happening right now with Arsenal and their set play performance. This was something that helped push Arsenal to among the highest scores in the Premier League last year, without the 20 set play goals and 10 penalties Arsenal would have only been the 5th highest scorers last year.

Overall when you look at the numbers, Arsenal probably did have some positive finishing variance go their way last year and I would agree that is probably not something that you should bank on repeating.

The bigger and more pertinent question however is can they continue to use this as a threat to generate the same numbers and quality of shots that they did last season?

For this question, I think the answer is that this is a resounding yes and perhaps even a spot where they can still and maybe should expect improvement.

Opportunities

The number one reason that I expect this to continue is that I believe that this is sustainable is that the opportunities to generate shots from set play will remain for Arsenal.

Arsenal ranked second in final third touches, and first in touches in the box. When a team has the ball in the opponent's final third a lot, they will have more corner kicks. These are highly correlated stats with each other.

I am not sure there is a good reason that we would expect Arsenal to have a big change in the final third touches. Over the last three seasons, the trend has been MORE, not less, with Arsenal consistently in the 200-250 touches in the final third per match range over the last two years as they have grown into one of the dominant teams of England.

I don’t have the same granularity on plays from free kicks but I think it would be a fairly safe assumption that fouls in attacking areas is also something that shows a positive relationship with the amount of possession a team has in the attacking areas of the pitch.

Converting Opportunites into Shots

I think the assumption that Arsenal will have similar levels of opportunities is pretty safe. If the number of opportunities fall, something has probably gone wrong for Arsenal and they have maybe fundamentally changed the game model that they use in the game or the talent level has taken a massive dive from what we have seen from the players over the last 2.5 years.

That’s not impossible but I think it would be an unlikely outcome.

This section might be the area where I think you could potentially forecast improvement for Arsenal. Given the number of opportunities Arsenal have to generate shots, they have not been that much different than average at turning chances into shots.

Arsenal were okay at getting shots from free kick situations, creating 30 shots but this is not an outlier ranking below the league average figure of 35 shots. This is interesting and it seems to have a negative relationship with total touches (even if I still think the fouls would be positively correlated) and it might be because the “good” teams won’t take every chance to fire a shot into the box but rather only the ones from the best locations to generate a shot.

For corner kicks, something that Arsenal have gotten a lot of praise for they are actually below the league average at generating shots per corner kick taken. One of the biggest outliers on this is Liverpool, this can be partially attributed to their unique preference to take out swinging corners which can lead to more chances, but fewer high-quality chances.

Last season Arsenal generated a shot on 43.1% of their corner kicks taken, the League Average for this was 43.5%. This is something that there is a fairly tight bunching (excluding Liverpool) and not an area where I would feel especially concerned that Arsenal were doing something that suggested there would be air in the numbers.

Arsenal on the style of corners is nearly the polar opposite of Liverpool's, they take in-swinging corners nearly exclusively when they don’t play it short (and they don’t play short too often). This like the previous research suggests leads to Arsenal having fewer shots (116 to 160) but the shots they do create are higher quality (0.105 xG per shot vs 0.081 xG per shot), leading to the teams ending up in a very similar spot (12.2 xG vs 13.1 xG).

Arsenal value set plays

I think this is one of the big things that makes me confident about Arsenal’s continued excellence on set plays, they care about it and want to be good at this.

I think the opportunities will be there and I don’t think that there was any major outlier-type stuff from the overall creation rates. Given these two issues and combining it with that the team seemingly has this as a priority would make me very bullish that this is something that can and should continue.

This is apparent throughout the team and the philosophy.

• The best deliverer of the ball on each side takes the corner kicks. I am sure lots of teams would rather have the large fella Declan Rice in the box or back to make sure no team can break on them but Arsenal values his excellent delivery to put him on that duty.

• The team is full of size. Arsenal have a team full of six-footers and have been linked with even more this summer in the transfer window.

• The team have a highly regarded set play coach and are pushing the boundaries of what is allowed to try and create the best designs and opportunities to score.

• Arteta is a competitive freak that talks about trying to squeeze out any bit of marginal improvement he can, including from the outside perspective dedicating time to working on set plays on the training ground.

Final thoughts

I imagine it is easy to think that there should be a regression from Arsenal on set plays. There very well might be on the goals scored but I don’t think that will mean that it will become an area where Arsenal are less dangerous, the shots just might not all go in at the same rate they did last year (20 goals from 15 xG is a bit high).

That being acknowledged it is also not crazy to think that the rate at which they generate these chances can also be improved. Arsenal can improve at generating shots from both corners and the free kicks that they have, they have been essentially League average and they have players on bother delivery and getting on the end of passes that are better than just average.

I am cautiously optimistic that this can be an area where Arsenal improve next year and continue to be one of the best teams at set plays.