French Ligue 1 club AS Monaco successfully deployed a new tactic on Wednesday night that may have revealed to rivals the way to deal with Arsenal’s corners in the Premier League, Daily Mail reports.
The Gunners have scored 22 goals from corners, more than any other Premier League club since the start of the 2023-24 season, thanks to set-piece specialist coach Nicolas Jover.
Jover was even honoured with a mural outside the Emirates on Wednesday night, but Arsenal were unable to score from a corner against Monaco, despite winning 3-0.
Their inability to find the net from a corner may have been down to Monaco’s approach as the French club tried something different for Arsenal’s set-pieces.
Adi Hutter’s team decided to leave three attackers high up the pitch when defending corners, which meant that Arsenal had to leave more players back than normal.
They also had a player on hand to stop the short corner, so there were fewer bodies in the penalty box.
Arsenal usually put someone on the goal-line to distract the goalkeeper, but were unable to put as much pressure on Radoslaw Majecki due to keeping players back for fear of being hit on the counter-attack.
Arsenal managed to score three goals from open play, but were ineffective from set-pieces as Monaco’s tactic worked perfectly.
It will be interesting to see whether Premier League clubs now try to copy Monaco’s tactic to combat Arsenal’s threat.
Gabriel has been the biggest beneficiary of Arsenal’s corner routines this season, having scored four goals from them in all competitions.
The Brazilian international missed Wednesday’s game through injury, which may go some way to explaining why Arsenal struggled to cause Monaco issues when it came to dead-ball scenarios.
