‘If Arsenal stop scoring from set pieces, they could come unstuck’
Former Man United assistant coach Rene Meulensteen has been speaking about Arsenal’s threat from set pieces and believes Mikel Arteta’s side need to do more from open play.
Speaking to compare.bet he said:
Every manager wants to score from open play. If you ask Mikel Arteta he will say exactly the same thing. He wants to score more goals from open play and I think he’s got the squad and the players to do that but they have established such a goal threat from the corners and wide free kicks and that’s why they are top of the table.
They have the players who can score from open play but open play so often leads to set pieces for them so they’ve thought, well hold on a minute. We get all these set pieces and we don’t take advantage of them, and that is what they’ve done. They’ve looked at it. They brought in a specialist. They’ve worked at it and it’s working. That’s great.
You can almost say for Arsenal that open play that leads to a corner or a free kick is half a goal. It’s another way of looking at it. I don’t see it as a negative thing. Any goal scored should be celebrated by the coach, the players and the fans whether it’s from a free kick or some beautiful thing from open play.
Ideally, of course, all the top teams will score all types of goals to be sustainable in staying at the top because other teams will learn to defend better and make it harder or more difficult to score from set pieces. If that dries up for Arsenal, they could come unstuck, and they don’t want that.
