Short Corners: The Facts

Like anything, it's fine if you generally make a good job of it. Neither our corners into the box or short corners were good enough on saturday. A bit more work needed on the training ground (and hopefully some quality additions).
I have no problem with it in pricipal though, but a little spark and invention is needed.
 
Glover_elbow said:
you can have good short and long corners and a mixture of both is best. Our short corners were poor on Saturday at least 3 or 4 of the short routines the ball ended back at the centre circle with all impetus gone. Our delivery from long corners is appaling and has been sometime good delivery is more important than height look at the whip and pace luton put on the ball in contrast to us
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Our long corners have been ineffective for years, as you rightly highlight so why don’t you ever hear people screaming for us to stop taking long corners and take a short one?

That’s people prejudiced by decades of basic football, and intimidated by intelligent football. The majority of our fans believe you win the game through hard work and getting the ball in the box alone. The Charlie Hughes school of football tactics. Fact is he was statistically proven wrong, banging the ball in the box as early as possible isn’t effective.

Stick with short corners but work at them, improve them
 
Glover_elbow said:
you can have good short and long corners and a mixture of both is best. Our short corners were poor on Saturday at least 3 or 4 of the short routines the ball ended back at the centre circle with all impetus gone. Our delivery from long corners is appaling and has been sometime good delivery is more important than height look at the whip and pace luton put on the ball in contrast to us
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Aye, I think both approaches risk becoming ineffective when they become predictable.

Agree the delivery is key. The best I've seen is Ziege. Whipped fast into a dangerous area every time. Just caused panic.
 
festa5 said:
Aye, I think both approaches risk becoming ineffective when they become predictable.

Agree the delivery is key. The best I've seen is Ziege. Whipped fast into a dangerous area every time. Just caused panic.
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We don’t have a player that can cross like that, even Giles couldn’t do that
 
atypical_boro said:
Fans often say “I hate short corners”, because what they really want is a transactional cross onto someone’s head and the net to instantly bulge routinely when their team does it. But the game has developed quite a bit since that was the “best” way to score a goal.
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Must admit I'm very much in the camp that sees a corner as an opportunity to keep possession, rather than a goal scoring opportunity. Move the ball, disrupt the defence and find space.
 
BoroMart said:
We don’t have a player that can cross like that, even Giles couldn’t do that
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I made the point on Saturday that we defaulted to short because no one would take responsibility for long. Interestingly Barlaser took all the set pieces for Rotherham and had an excellent record
 
Glover_elbow said:
I made the point on Saturday that we defaulted to short because no one would take responsibility for long. Interestingly Barlaser took all the set pieces for Rotherham and had an excellent record
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No we didn't, it's clearly a tactic that's been implemented by the coaching team.

edit: but whether the instruction is to do it every time or not i obviously couldn't say
 
BoroMart said:
Our long corners have been ineffective for years, as you rightly highlight so why don’t you ever hear people screaming for us to stop taking long corners and take a short one?

That’s people prejudiced by decades of basic football, and intimidated by intelligent football. The majority of our fans believe you win the game through hard work and getting the ball in the box alone. The Charlie Hughes school of football tactics. Fact is he was statistically proven wrong, banging the ball in the box as early as possible isn’t effective.

Stick with short corners but work at them, improve them
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I would rather improve long rather than abandon. Short all the time would become too predictable
 
Glover_elbow said:
To end up back in the centre circle suggests its had Iittle practice
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i suspect it has, but it's different in a game i guess. We did a better job last season, but we had the invention of Akpom, Giles, Ramsey etc, and even Jonny Howson who's a bit smarter with this stuff
 
changingman said:
Must admit I'm very much in the camp that sees a corner as an opportunity to keep possession, rather than a goal scoring opportunity. Move the ball, disrupt the defence and find space.
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Exactly. As soon as you pass the ball their defensive shape is all over the place. I’d like us to be the short corner equivalent of 80s wimbledon at long ones
 
BoroMart said:
Long all the time is predictable, its why teams always line up their defence assuming a long corner is coming in not a short one
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its the element of surprise that makes a short corner effective. A defender switches off and theres an overload as happened when we scored agianst coventry. We do it all the time defences will set up for it more effectively. A mixture is best.
 
Lumping corners in the box are old school, I get it sometimes it might need to happen but I like the short corners, it's different. We've had so many years of boring lumping of the ball and finally we get to watch nice attacking football and all people want to do is moan about it.

The amount of times we've conceded goals because the defence has switched off and the other team has taken a quick set piece is a joke really so we should be encouraging the team to be trying this!
 
changingman said:
Must admit I'm very much in the camp that sees a corner as an opportunity to keep possession, rather than a goal scoring opportunity. Move the ball, disrupt the defence and find space.
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More teams are doing what we have started doing. You have the corner taker, the person by him, then someone on a slight diagonal near the corner of the box and another person back from them. The aim is to have several options so that the other team can't predict the angle of attack; including the option of an immediate cross. Our first corner of the match was a cross into the box (and straight into the keeper's hands) from McGree.

It's the same rationale as playing short from the keeper.

It's also about focusing on keeping possession. Way too many corners are defended successfully leading to an attack by the defending team. I think there's a stat somewhere showing that the defending team is more likely to score from an attack after a corner than the team taking a "normal" corner.

Plus we don't have any good crossers and only one player who is any threat in the air.
 
Bruce said:
More teams are doing what we have started doing. You have the corner taker, the person by him, then someone on a slight diagonal near the corner of the box and another person back from them. The aim is to have several options so that the other team can't predict the angle of attack; including the option of an immediate cross. Our first corner of the match was a cross into the box (and straight into the keeper's hands) from McGree.

It's the same rationale as playing short from the keeper.

It's also about focusing on keeping possession. Way too many corners are defended successfully leading to an attack by the defending team. I think there's a stat somewhere showing that the defending team is more likely to score from an attack after a corner than the team taking a "normal" corner.

Plus we don't have any good crossers and only one player who is any threat in the air.
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The fact we dont have any good crossers as you say is a damming indictment of the standard of footballer at the club
 
Mourinho once said that England's the only country he's coached in where fans celebrate winning a corner.
 
Statistics can't just be applied in this situation. Football doesn't work statistically. As mentioned, we've been rubbish for years with long corners so statistically we have been bad at them. That doesn't mean we couldn't be better now. Crosses into the box give you a chance to score. It's a low chance but it is still a chance. A short corner that never ends up in the box gives you no chance. A cross into the box that is defended often gives you a second chance, with defences out of position and it's still a low chance to score.

Corners are easier to score from if you have players that are good at scoring from corners (unless Toby Pulis is manager weirdly). Lenihan is very good at getting on the end of crosses but he can't direct a header. Crooks is similar. That means we're not bad at taking corners, we're bad at taking chances. Ayala was very good at it and we scored regularly from corners. Maybe the answer isn't practicing taking corners but practicing heading the ball at a target. Making a headed clearance that doesn't have to go to a specific place and aiming a header are very different skills. Fry (2 in 200) and Lenihan (7 in 200) have only scored 9 goals between them in over 400 league games. That is poor so maybe they are the problem. McNair is no better attacking a header and he even takes corners when playing centre back which removes one of our attacking options.

We're least effective against teams sitting deep. Short corners are exactly that so I don't think they are the answer. A combination of the two is needed but working on our finishing from crosses should probably be the priority.
 
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