Under Tony Pulis, Stoke City’s pre-rehearsed set-piece routines struck fear into defences throughout the Premier League, not least Arsenal, who came unstuck against the Potters time and time again.
Now we have come full circle, with the Gunners’ corner routines, masterminded by set-piece coach Nicolas Jover, creating similar chaos.
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, Mikel Arteta’s side have scored more goals from corners than any other side in Europe’s top five leagues.
A team that once appeared to view Stoke’s approach as an affront to their own quest to achieve footballing perfection are now doing a passable Potters impression. If you can’t beat them? Well, you may as well join them.
The irony is not lost on Matthew Etherington, the former Stoke midfielder and a man whose own corners, alongside the touchline exocets of Rory Delap, was a key weapon in the club’s set-piece armoury under Pulis.
“They hated us at the time,” he says, laughing at the memory.
Now working with the Southampton under-21s, Etherington is still in regular contact with his old boss, with conservations often turning to just how important free kicks, corners and Delap’s towering throw-ins were to a side who punched above their weight and delighted in dishing out more than the odd bloody nose throughout Pulis’s time at the club.
“Tony took all the set-piece training, we didn’t have a specialist coach at the time, everything we did was a result of Tony’s attention to detail,” Etherington tells The i Paper.
“You don’t see managers doing it now but he was all over them – Tony was the one that would nail them down, and we would work on them every day. The detail he went into was exceptional.”
Fuelled by a controversial challenge from Ryan Shawcross on Aaron Ramsey in a clash between the pair in 2010, Arsenal and Stoke’s rivalry was one of most unlikely in Premier League history. And it’s hard to overstate just how intense it was.
“I think Tony Pulis was living rent free in Arsene Wenger’s head for years,” says James Chadwick, a Stoke season ticket holder.
“They just couldn’t handle it. Every time they turned up at the Brit, something happened. But regardless of who we were playing, every time we got a set-piece near goal, there was a feeling that anything was possible.”
Pulis himself spent 11 years in the Potteries, during two spells in charge that completely transformed the club’s fortunes. Masterminding three home wins in the top flight and FA Cup over Arsenal in a four-year period was merely a sizeable footnote to his time at the Britannia.
He has been understandably impressed by Arsenal’s corner routines so far this season. He is less enamoured by some of the defending.
“They [the corners] are very good, the delivery and commitment to score from the players is first class,” he says. You do, though, get the feeling that there’s a “but” coming. And here it is: “But! The defending is very poor.”
It would be fascinating to see how the notoriously tough and parsimonious Stoke backline under the Welshman would have fared against the delivery from Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka.
We’ll never know, of course, but there will be plenty of people willing to wager that they would have coped considerably better than Manchester United’s floundering defence did last week or Fulham’s on Sunday.
“Man for man,” Pulis responds when asked the best way to defend the inswinging grenades launched by the Gunners’ corner takers.
“Two good players in the air as space men – one on the near post and one in front mid-space just inside the six yard box because the quality is in the swinging delivery. You need an Andy Carroll type [of player, in size and aerial ability].”
Time and again, Arsenal have undone opposition defences with Jover’s routines, and Etherington believes the magic comes with the mystery of the delivery and the execution. And a playbook far more extensive than the one employed by Stoke.
“I actually had to put my hand on the ball, walk backwards, which was a weird thing to do because you don’t know if you’re in the right angle to deliver the ball, and then put my hand up,” Etherington says.
“Every time I touched the ball or walked backwards it was different movement for the defenders, or the attackers trying to head the ball.
“You look at Arsenal now, they’re so well-drilled. They’ve got a playbook – yes, they’re scoring from corners, but the goals are different. It’s the nuances of blocks too and how clever they are. They’ve been brilliant at it.
“Once you get the success from it, you get the buy-in from the players. I’m sure that the Arsenal players are looking forward to every corner at the moment. It’s a massive part of the game.”
Etherington tells the story of a presentation made by former Manchester City defender Andy Morrison as part of his Uefa A Licence course. Morrison outlined just how many major matches in the Champions League, domestic football and major international tournaments, were settled by a single intervention from a corner or a free kick. The purpose was to illustrate the difference a single corner, free kick or even throw on can make.
“I think it’s generally still a massively undervalued area of the game,” Etherington says.
“Although that’s changing with the introduction of specialist set-piece coaches.”
He’s not wrong. At Arsenal, Jover is currently proving every bit as influential as Saka, Rice or any other member of the club’s corner crew.
If Arteta’s men bring home some silverware this season, then their managerial nemesis might be tempted to pen a four word congratulatory note – I told you so.
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