Chelsea’s corner scoring rate has halved to 2.3% since appointing set piece guru | OneFootball

When Chelsea got rid of Mauricio Pochettino in the summer, one of the bullet points that came up in the many long pieces explaining his departure – heavily briefed by sources within the club – was that the Argentine hadn’t been keen to work with a specialised set piece coach.

That role has become suddenly very popular in the Premier League after the likes of Arsenal and Brentford found great success using it, and in the end Chelsea actually poached the Bees’ own Bernardo Cueva to implement a similar setup at Chelsea.

It’s fair to say it’s not yet worked wonders, as Kieran Gill’s piece for the Daily Mail explains.

We’ve had 131 corners so far this season, leading to 3 goals. That’s a conversion rate of 2.3%. Last season, with no Cueva, we ended the season with 9 goals from 202 corners – 4.5%.

So we’re going to need to see some pretty rapid progress to come close to last season’s total, let aloe beat it. The £750,000 we paid to Brentford for their set piece guru looks like it may take some time to pay off.

Team building and selection also affected by set piece issues

Levi Colwill challenges Virgil van Dijk for a header in the Carabao Cup final 2024. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Another thing that’s noted in the Mail’s piece is the need for more tall players to help out both defending and attacking set pieces. We can expect 6’4 Trevoh Chalobah to come into the team, and 6’5 Tosin Adarabioyo has that statistic in his favour too. His height is apparently “one of the reasons he was signed in the summer.”

Josh Acheampong is no slouch at 6’2, but when you combine that with his lack of experience, he may be the one to miss out, with Tosin coming back in. Tonight’s opposition have shown themselves to be vulnerable to set pieces. Maybe this is the moment that project Cueva finally comes together.