Premier League 2021/22: A look into Liverpool’s dominant corner strategy – tactical analysis

As you are all probably aware Liverpool could potentially achieve one of the greatest feats in football this season by winning the quadruple. They have already secured the Carabao Cup and are closely chasing the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League.

If they are to achieve this, their ability to maximize their set pieces will have played a significant factor. The importance of set pieces in football is finally getting the recognition it deserves with the role of set-piece coaches now more established, with clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester United and Aston Villa all having a specialist coach. The importance of set pieces will vary from source to source but set-piece goals roughly account for around 30% of goals, so ensuring your set-piece strategy is effective and well thought out is paramount. Liverpool is a club who are always at the forefront of innovation, and they were one of the first clubs to employ a throw-in coach in Thomas Gronnemark, so the fact they are one of the best teams at attacking set-pieces is not a surprise.

This tactical analysis and set-piece analysis will delve deeper into why they are so effective at corners, looking at how they choose to attack them and the principles which make them one of the deadliest sides in Europe from corners.

So far this season in the Premier League Liverpool and Manchester City lead the way with 15 set-piece goals each. Liverpool also has the second-highest set-piece XG with 13.7, only bettered by Brentford whose set-piece strategy we did an analysis of earlier in the year. Finally, they have the highest number of shots generated from set-pieces with 166.

Their set-pieces are not only effective in the league but also in the UEFA Champions League where they have scored 5 set pieces goals in the tournament this season. Liverpool has been one of the top performers in set pieces for a couple of seasons now, despite not being the tallest team they have a well-thought-out strategy and execute their set-pieces with precision. This is certainly aided by having players Like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson delivering the ball and the likes of Virgil Van Dijk and Ibrahim Konate attacking the ball, but this shouldn’t take away from their consistent brilliance at corners.

Outswinging attacking corners deep into the box

If you have watched Liverpool in recent weeks, you will have noticed they have scored corners in big moments, the FA cup semi-final first goal against Manchester City and two goals against Benfica in the UEFA Champions League quarter-final also. These goals were achieved using the same strategy, a strategy Liverpool has been utilizing for the majority of the season so far.

Liverpool has predominantly used an outswinging corner tactic so far this season. With these outswinging corners, they have chosen to place them deeper in the box and in the second half of the box, which will become more apparent in the examples. Our belief is this is a way of exploiting the hybrid marking system (now the most common form of defending corners) where most teams will defend the six-yard box in a zone and the rest of the team man mark. By using outswinging corners it naturally takes the ball away from the zone or oppositions best aerial defenders, it is also harder for the defenders who defend the deeper area to win the aerial duel as they have been tracking the ball rather than watching the advancing attacker. Below we will take a look at two of these types of corners.

Just to start, we have highlighted two zones in the box, to show which area Liverpool has been looking to exploit in recent games. Liverpool has really been emphasizing the blue area of the box, this could be for two reasons. One defender and goalkeepers will naturally watch the ball as it comes in, this means in the blue area they cannot see the Liverpool runners as they are behind them creating more opportunities for Liverpool players to go undetected. Secondly, with this system, there is the potential for the gap between the back two defenders to be bigger than the rest of the zone, which will become apparent in the examples.

Now Liverpool almost always has six players in the box and two on the outside of the box. The way the six in the box set up will differ from game to game but usually, they have one in and around the keeper, three making runs from deep and two making runs nearer to goal.

Here Manchester City is defending in a hybrid system, with five defenders defending the 6-yard box and the rest picking up the Liverpool runners from deep.