The great corner debate: The penalty area, the referees and what it means for WC

If Arsenal lift their first Premier League title since 2004 by scoring many of their big goals from corners and set-pieces this season then they will not care and nor should they. Dead ball routines have always been a part of top-flight football and if teams like Arsenal and others are perfecting the art then maybe it’s time for everybody else to look in the mirror and ask why they aren’t doing the same.

Not much of it is pretty, though. Watching players block, pull and hold at corners is becoming an increasingly unedifying spectacle and even those who are getting good at it are starting to wonder what it’s all about.

Arsenal scored two more goals from corners to beat Chelsea at the Emirates on Sunday but it’s actually Liverpool – with seven from their last nine – who are running hot from set pieces and throw-ins as the season reaches its defining point.

Yet even their manager Arne Slot said on Monday that: ‘My football heart doesn't like it. Most of the games I see in the Premier League are not for me a joy to watch. You just have to accept it.’

So as the Premier League threatens to become defined not by its beauty but by its muscle, Football Editor IAN LADYMAN looks at the debate that has fractured English football.

ARE MODERN TACTICS AT CORNERS EVEN LEGAL?

To say that Arsenal and other clubs are now living on the margins of the laws would be appropriate. To understand this we only have to look at LAW 12 that deals with the subject of obstruction which is defined as: ‘Impeding the progress of an opponent by moving into the opponent’s path to obstruct, block, slow down or force a change of direction when the ball is not within playing distance of either player.’

If players from any club behaved the way they do whilst awaiting a corner or attacking set piece in any other area of the field (for example when awaiting a goal kick upfield) there would be an uproar. The fact that we have started to accept it in these instances is simply because referees and VAR officials have been weak for too long and also because the mainstream media spent too long indulging and lionising the practise before finally coming round to the current view that it’s not particularly good for the game.

Set piece coaches such as Nicolas Jover at Arsenal and Aston Villa’s Austin MacPhee were lauded as innovators for their work two or three years ago when it was clear to the objective eye that much of what they were preaching was pushing at the boundaries of what should be permitted within the laws. This is not their fault. The laws of the game are there to be enforced and it’s not happening.

There are nuances, of course. Currently, referees can only penalise players for what they do once the ball is in flight. If they were able to call a foul on players wrestling or blocking while they were waiting for a corner to be taken, we may see a change.

There is also the following nuance to the law: ‘All players have a right to their position on the field of play,’ it says. ‘Being in the way of an opponent is not the same as moving into the way of an opponent.’

One more thing for match officials to think about as they try to unpick this mess. It won't be easy.

THE SET PIECE GUYS ARE JUST OVER-RATED THEN…

No, not at all. The likes of Jover and MacPhee and many others consistently show their worth at either end of the field. You only had to watch Liverpool during the first half of the season to see what happens when clubs don’t get this important part of their tactics spot on. It really played a part in Arne Slot’s struggles to get the defending champions functioning properly and after jettisoning his own set-piece guy Aaron Briggs at the end of December his team have benefited from listening to new voices.

Jover at Arsenal spends endless hours working with Declan Rice on his delivery whilst coming up with set play moves that wouldn’t look out of place in an American Football play book. It’s clever and imaginative and takes sharp minds but also complete buy-in from every outfield player. If one player drops his concentration or doesn’t manage to execute his part of the plan then the chances are that the whole thing falls down.

Equally, there have been expert dead ball specialists in English football before. David Beckham at Manchester United, for example. If players had been crawling all over each other like worms at the bottom of a soggy sandpit back in the late 1990s, match officials wouldn’t have allowed it to continue very long.

ARE THESE DELIVERIES JUST IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEND?

Absolutely not and this is the very heart of this issue. Without doubt a team like Arsenal has a psychological grip over much of the Premier League when it comes to this matter and the manifestation of this has been that opponents have lost focus on what exactly it is they should be doing at defensive corners and free-kicks.

Firstly, defenders need to realise that it’s almost impossible to jump off the ground while holding on to an opponent’s shirt. At Anfield on Saturday West Ham’s Soungoutou Magassa seemed so intent on gripping Virgil van Dijk that he was unable to get up with him as the Liverpool captain used his opponent as a lever to rise and score.

Secondly, defenders now appear to have turned their backs – no pun intended – on actually watching the ball as it arrives in the penalty area. The Arsenal-Chelsea game provided great examples of this but for a greater idea of the panic caused by Arsenal’s sheer presence at an attacking set piece, we can go back to a goal scored by the Gunners at Leeds at the end of January.

When Noni Madueke’s inswinging corner arrives at the near post in the 38th minute, the five players nearest to the ball are all actually from Leeds. The only two Arsenal players in the vicinity – William Saliba and Martin Zubimendi – make no attempt to get there and as such never leave the ground.

It should have a routine defensive situation from this point but – doubtless blinded by fear and dread – Dominic Calvert-Lewin and goalkeeper Martin Dubravka manage to get in each other’s way and combine to hand Arsenal an utterly needless own goal.

That was simply a goal caused by reputation, panic and the subsequent confusion caused by both. It is not unusual.

DO ARSENAL’S TACTICS HAVE OPPOSITION MANAGERS SPOOKED?

The set piece issue has certainly got in to their minds. Chelsea’s Liam Rosenior admitted on Sunday that he had spent all week drilling his players on how to defend Arsenal’s corners while at Leeds Daniel Farke made the remarkable confession that he had told his players to simply try to not concede any.

That in itself smacks of some kind of strange inferiority complex. As the excellent Shay Given pointed out on Match of the Day earlier this season, it’s about time the Premier League and its sophisticated coaches started to worry less about Arsenal’s aerial prowess and instead come up with ways to combat it. They are just corner kicks after all.

Meanwhile, former Republic of Ireland defender and manager Mick McCarthy talked about the issue to the Daily Mail before Christmas and put it quite simply.

‘I was always told to jump as high as I could and head the ball away,’ he said. ‘If I had been facing the wrong way and holding on to the bloke I was trying to mark instead of watching the ball, I don’t think I would have been in the team very long.’

IS ALL THIS IS GOING TO HELP ENGLAND AT THE WORLD CUP?

Well, yes, and also no. England coach Thomas Tuchel has been saying for a while that he believes corners will be decisive during the tournament. He believes the hot conditions will play in to the hands of teams able to execute from set pieces and he will hopefully travel with experts Declan Rice and Reece James in his squad. It’s also one of the reasons that’s Newcastle’s 6ft 7in central defender Dan Burn is a shoo-in for the tournament.

However, there is no way that FIFA’s group of international referees will tolerate the levels of penalty area nonsense that have been allowed to form a backdrop of the current Premier League season. It’s also a reason why Arsenal may have to find another route to goal in the latter stages of the Champions League. As Liverpool boss Slot said on Monday, the football equivalent of a concert mosh pit doesn't really exist in any other country.