Premier League 2021/22: Looking at Leicester’s blind spot defending corners – set-piece analysis

Under Brendan Rodgers, Leicester City had two great seasons as top-four challengers and consecutive appearances in the UEFA Europa League. While they reinforced with the likes of Patson Daka, Ryan Bertrand, Jannik Vestergaard, and Boubakary Soumaré, they have failed to reach the same standard as they did before. After 23 Premier League games, they were the 11^th of the league with two games in hands to play than most of the teams, but they are not near to the European competition seat.

Leicester conceded 50 goals in 2020/21, but the number of goals against is already 43 at this stage of the season  their defence is clearly not as solid as they were. If we delve into the distribution of their conceded goals, their corner defending is a very big problem. Last season, the Foxes only conceded nine corner goals in 53 games in all competitions; while they played 37 games in 2021/22 so far, they have 12 conceded corner goals. Their vulnerability of corner defending was obvious, and Rodgers also knew this through his analysis of the game.

However, even with the Foxes trying different tactics to defend dead balls, not much has changed. This set-piece analysis is a scout report that explains how Leicester struggled in their corner defending this season.

Mixed system

At the beginning of the season, Leicester just set up the defensive corners with a mixed approach very similar to other good teams in the league. They would have four to five zonal defenders to guard the six-yard box, and some man-markers to mark the identified threat of the opponents. This approach was not successful because they have been conceding corners, we are providing some examples below to illustrate.

Firstly, we showed Antonio Rüdiger’s goal at the King Power Stadium. Leicester had five zonal defenders three to four man-markers, and a goalkeeper closer to the goal line. The four-man zonal chain included their best players in the air, such as Jonny Evans and Çağlar Söyüncü in the centre of the six-yard line. They also had Timothy Castagne and Wilfred Ndidi as a part of the zonal system.

Soumaré and Daniel Amartey are players possessing some physical qualities, they were assigned as the man-markers alongside with Harvey Barnes. However, Chelsea used a good strategy to create the goal, Rüdiger’s beginning position is close to Kasper Schmeichel.