“Our setup is slightly different, but the biggest reason is that things have gone back to normal,” Arne Slot said after Liverpool’s 5-2 win over West Ham, in which they scored three times from corners in the first half.
Seven of Liverpool’s last nine Premier League goals have come from set-pieces, five of them from corners, a stark turnaround from earlier in the season when they briefly had the worst set-play record in Europe’s top five leagues. Slot has admitted this shift “might hurt his ‘football heart'”, but accepting the Premier League’s new reality has been the pragmatic response: if you can’t beat them, join them.
Set-piece work was not originally central to Slot’s plan, but he has increasingly taken ownership alongside assistants Sipke Hulshoff and Giovanni van Bronckhorst. Set-piece analyst Lewis Mahoney has been given a bigger voice, and there are no plans to hire a specialist set-piece coach. The change also followed the departure of former set-piece coach Aaron Briggs at the end of December, after which Slot favoured a more collective approach.
The technical shift mirrors a league-wide trend: inswinging corners into congested six-yard boxes are now common. Offensive teams average 3.25 players in the six-yard box, up from 2.51 last season, while defending teams now place 7.33 players there, up from 6.67. That congestion limits space for goalkeepers and reduces their chance of making first contact.
Across the Premier League, 81% of corners crossed directly are now inswingers, up from 71% last season and around 59% in earlier campaigns. For Liverpool, the inswinger has been especially effective for Virgil van Dijk and Hugo Ekitike, and for players who capitalise on second phases like Alexis Mac Allister.
In Liverpool’s recent run, each of their last three league wins has included a corner goal. In those matches they took 28 corners, 70% of which landed directly in the centre of the six-yard box — the prime zone for scoring — compared with just 19% before Slot took greater control of set-play delivery.
The three corner goals against West Ham were aided by particularly poor defending, but all three were inswingers. Van Dijk’s header and Ekitike’s opener demonstrated the direct and indirect value of that delivery. West Ham’s Mateus Fernandes told Sky Sports after the game that his side had worked all week on a plan to stop Van Dijk — a plan that failed. For the third goal, West Ham allowed multiple contacts in the box, enabling Mac Allister to score from a shorter delivery by Mohamed Salah.
Player movement and physical presence are also important. Ekitike’s 6ft 3in frame and positional intelligence helped across the three goals: holding space, drawing defenders, and peeling to the back post. Van Dijk’s aerial threat remains central.
Set-piece importance is heightened when Liverpool’s open-play supply is reduced — for example when Florian Wirtz is nullified or absent — making their fit striker’s threat from dead balls vital. Liverpool generate 163 corners this season, fourth-most in the division and only seven fewer than Arsenal’s 170. Arsenal remain the benchmark for set-play conversion, but Liverpool have always created chances from set plays; with subtle tweaks to zonal marking and delivery they are finally converting more of them.