How do we solve our set piece issue and which signing this summer is the most important?

[Ric Flair]

As we go and lay down in a dark room and all take sleeping tablets so that we sleep a dreamless sleep and not have to relive our set piece nightmares over and over this summer, one question hangs over my head when I'm awake.

 

How does Brendan Rodgers solve our chronic set piece issue? Is it simply a coaching correction either by him and his current coaches, or by seeking expert help to come in as a defensive/set piece coach (defence and attack) and improve us?

 

Or do we also need better defenders of set pieces? If it's the latter, the real issue is how do we do that because you don't tend to just buy players who can get their head on a set piece. I look through our team at what we need to bring in in the summer and accepting that a new CB will play with Fofana when Evans doesn't play, the only other starting XI improvements are likely to be to replace Tielemans and at right wing. Is that going to be enough? Are we going to have to buy a Sander Berge / Kephran Thuram / Manu Kone who at 6ft 4 can provide us that help in central midfield? I think that has to be the answer. We're not going to change too many other players at full back, midfield or attack so I hope that's the sort of midfield replacement we see for Tielemans, even though I'd love us to get Kokcu it might not be as beneficial to our team.

 

Set pieces and injuries are our biggest weakness from challenging for the top 6, yes we need to keep progressing elsewhere and creating and scoring goals and the right wing position remains our number 1 priority as the Soyuncu and Tielemans replacements happen when we are in a position to do so. 

 

I really hope he sorts it this summer but it's by no means a guarantee he will, its as precarious as the rebuild is.

[adejo92]

1. New set piece coach.

2. New keeper.

 

Sorted.

[coolhandfox]

Bring in players that are more dominate in the air who have the physicality and aggression to win the first and second contact. Other then the CBs and Ndidi when he plays we don't have the height or physicality to deal with the bigger sides.

 

Doesn't matter how good a coach you are you aren't going to coach a team with 8 or 9 5'4 to 5'10 - players to dominate at corners.

 

The reason Stoke where the masters of the set piece is because Tony Pulis often played 4 CB. 

 

Whilst its a totally different level, there is a reason you will hear "Size for size, man for man on most local Saturday and Sunday league pitches!

 

 

  

Edited 28 May 2022 by coolhandfox

[winteriscoming]

Get rid of Kolo. Clearly he’s doing nothing to solve the defensive set piece issues. Bring in Stuart Pearce. Just left West Ham. 
Also wouldn’t be disappointed if Kasper went. I’d like us to go for Pope at Burnley. 

[Blue-fox]

We need to go out and buy an absolute unit of a centre half, big and ugly and will dominate in the air with premier league experience……

 

oh wait we did and he was appalling😂

 

In all seriousness having players on the pitch willing to stick their head where it hurts would be a start. Also try keeping Vardy and another upfront to keep some of the opponents out of the box. 
 

 

[Ric Flair]

27 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Bring in players that are more dominate in the air who have the physicality and aggression to win the first and second contact. Other then the CBs and Ndidi when he plays we don't have the height or physicality to deal with the bigger sides.

 

Doesn't matter how good a coach you are you aren't going to coach a team with 8 or 9 5'4 to 5'10 - players to dominate at corners.

 

The reason Stoke where the masters of the set piece is because Tony Pulis often played 4 CB. 

 

Whilst its a totally different level, there is a reason you will hear "Size for size, man for man on most local Saturday and Sunday league pitches!

 

 

  

The issue here is which players are they coming in for? We know we will get a RW who'll be first choice but wingers aren't renown for being good in the air, so it all falls on Tielemans and Soyuncu's replacements but is that enough? We aren't changing our full backs, Ndidi and KDH will start, as will Maddison and Vardy/Daka.

 

@adejo92 is probably bang on, we need a new keeper!

[Shane]

Add Iversen, Colwill, De Ketelaere and either Sangare or Kone to the first team. 

 

Play a double pivot of Ndidi and Sangare/Kone against the more physical teams.

[Trelleh]

Bin Kolo

Bin Stowell

Get Nick Pope

 

[Jobyfox]

Get rid of the high press. Play a low block and pace on the counter and start this fella….. 

 

[The Horse's Mouth]

We don't have enough time 

[StriderHiryu]

Get a set pieces coach in. 
 

This team is largely the same one that had one of the better defensive records in the league during the previous two seasons to this. The players we have at our disposal aren’t as bad as we think. 
 

The keeper needs to come to claim the ball more often. It has been a weakness of Kasper’s but the set pieces coach could correct it. 
 

It’s also notable that we concede more set piece goals without Ndidi. So if the Tielemans replacement is over 6 foot that would be an advantage. 
 

But in general the reason we concede so many is because we don’t attack the ball. Arsenal had similar issues, signed a set piece coach and fixed it. 

[Scotch]

Alot of it has to do with the players desire to get on the end of a header. Even our taller players lack the desire to do so. 

 

Much has been made of the defensive side of this but when you look at the other box, it really highlights it. At one point this season (I'm not sure when but I'm pretty certain it was 22) a comentator pointed out that we had only scored 3 headed goals up until that point in the campaign. Two of them were Vardy and one Ricardo. Cags,  Ndidi and Amartey who had played most by that point were just not hungry enough to get to the ball first, in either box. A massive case of looking like Tarzan and playing like Jane. 

[sylofox]

Sack Rodgers.

 

It's been a problem since he arrived that's got worse. It took him until just before xmas to see/admit it.

 

Also not happy with him doing this squad over hall. Think it's going to be money badly spent. Rather keep it in the bank until he's sacked.

[SuperMike]

1 hour ago, adejo92 said:

1. New set piece coach.

2. New keeper.

 

Sorted.

Nick Pope.

Sorted.

[gurru991]

The minimum requirement is a 'Proper' defensive coach. Someone with a history & experience of setting up a team defensively. Brendan has historically been poor defensively & Kolo obviously can't do the job. The problem for me is that BR's ego doesn't allow him to admit his own shortcomings & is terrified of having someone smarter than him in the background.

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, Ric Flair said:

The issue here is which players are they coming in for? We know we will get a RW who'll be first choice but wingers aren't renown for being good in the air, so it all falls on Tielemans and Soyuncu's replacements but is that enough? We aren't changing our full backs, Ndidi and KDH will start, as will Maddison and Vardy/Daka.

 

@adejo92 is probably bang on, we need a new keeper!

Wonder what our record is like when it's been Evans and Fofana this season?

 

If we can get Evans, Fofana and Ndidi all fit plus a CM who's good in the air we should be better.

 

Think we will look to bring in a CB as Evans will not last for ever.

 

A keeper that come for crosses would be good, but that's next season for me.

 

We have far more important positions to address.

[Ric Flair]

1 minute ago, coolhandfox said:

Wonder what our record is like when it's been Evans and Fofana this season?

 

If we can get Evans, Fofana and Ndidi all fit plus a CM who's good in the air we should be better.

 

Think we will look to bring in a CB as Evans will not last for ever.

 

A keeper that come for crosses would be good, but that's next season for me.

 

We have far more important positions to address.

It was still a bit iffy!!

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, StriderHiryu said:

Get a set pieces coach in. 
 

This team is largely the same one that had one of the better defensive records in the league during the previous two seasons to this. The players we have at our disposal aren’t as bad as we think. 
 

The keeper needs to come to claim the ball more often. It has been a weakness of Kasper’s but the set pieces coach could correct it. 
 

It’s also notable that we concede more set piece goals without Ndidi. So if the Tielemans replacement is over 6 foot that would be an advantage. 
 

But in general the reason we concede so many is because we don’t attack the ball. Arsenal had similar issues, signed a set piece coach and fixed it. 

Think you are forgeting they also brought a RB, CB and and a Keeper.

[coolhandfox]

Just now, Ric Flair said:

It was still a bit iffy!!

But it's not about being the best, if we were average this season at them, we finish top 6th

[sacreblueits442]

....get specialist Coach in, if Liverpool can do it, so can we!!!

It is not about the size of players, we can defend we have done so before, we just need to stop doing what we are doing at this moment, it doesn't work so let us do something else. We fail to understand the use of "Blockers", we are far too poorly coached and lack  nous in regards to the management of the game.

  We started out playing a highline, it means we are defending from the front and minimises the threat to our backline. It will not take anytime for us to resolve this, we have just not realised how to go about doing it, because the Coaching Team did not see that the problem existed in the first place.

  Let us not start bringing in unsuitable players to solve a crisis that does not really exist, the specialist Coach will give us so much more in addition to resolving this problem.

 

Edited 28 May 2022 by sacreblueits442
Spelling Error.

[Phenom]

Teun Koopmeiners Is 6’1…just saying.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

More aggressive players that want to throw themselves at the ball. 

 

Our soft underbelly has been a weakness for years now.

[StriderHiryu]

2 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

Think you are forgeting they also brought a RB, CB and and a Keeper.

That's a fair point they did do that. However, in recent seasons we have brought in CB's and RB's with good aerial clearances rates (Fofana, Castagne) too. But I won't deny that they clearly signed players to sort this out; Ramsdale is a commanding keeper, Gabriel great at aerial clearances, Tomiyasu too and physically much stronger than Bellerin who he replaces.

 

But anyway here are some quite interesting and surprising stats for us all to look at;

 

First up the current season we all know about, the joint worst record only helped by Everton matching us on the final day!

 

21/22

 

How about the season prior to that though?

 

20/21

 

 

The 6th worst in this season, though better than the current season by 7. Arguably if we had "only" conceded 12 instead of 19, we would have qualified for the Europa League or Conference League this time round.

 

But now things get very interesting. Let's go to 19/20.

 

19/20

 

In Rodger's first full season here, despite the massive choke at the end, we had the joint best set piece defensive record. Better than Man City AND Liverpool's!

 

And then let's go back even further to Puel's last season / Rodgers first season.

 

18/19

 

 

In this season, despite finishing mid-table, we had the BEST defensive record from set pieces in the division.

 

Summary

 

If you think about our back line during these seasons, what has changed? Well in the seasons that Harry Maguire was here, we were brilliant at defending set pieces. So for as maligned as he is for Man United, we can see he had a very positive effect for us. However, after leaving the Evans / Soyuncu combination in 19/20 was still very effective.

 

Ben Chilwell was also here for some of these seasons and factually our defensive record from set pieces is worse since he left. That's an interesting stat, though correlation does not always mean causation.

 

Do you want to know the biggest reason for Leicester conceding goals from set pieces defensively? Well these statistics I find the most telling:

 

 

It seems like the amount of goals we concede from set pieces is strongly correlated to the number of appearances Wilfred Ndidi makes for us in a season. Given that he is routinely in the top 10 for aerial clearances per season in previous seasons, that's probably not a surprise.

 

So if you wanted to "fix" our set piece issue, you could so a lot worse than get Ndidi fully fit. But if you really want to sort it, getting another player with high aerial clearance rate would be a good way to do it. CB would be nice, but Evans / Fofana is a great first team pairing. Hence why maybe another central midfielder with height could be a great addition.

 

Ibrahima Sangare of PSV by the way is 6 foot 2...

 

 

[Parafox]

Love KS but we need to get a keeper who will challenge aerially and not just be a shot stopper. I'm not sure Nick Pope will be much different TBH.

Get a tall, strong, decisive CB who can lead and direct his LB's and RB's who also has the experience of a strong defence as well as directing good distribution from the defenders. Stop the crap sideways passing, back to the keeper, playing out from the back. We need someone who can fill JE's boots and be a leader at the back. 

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, StriderHiryu said:

That's a fair point they did do that. However, in recent seasons we have brought in CB's and RB's with good aerial clearances rates (Fofana, Castagne) too. But I won't deny that they clearly signed players to sort this out; Ramsdale is a commanding keeper, Gabriel great at aerial clearances, Tomiyasu too and physically much stronger than Bellerin who he replaces.

 

But anyway here are some quite interesting and surprising stats for us all to look at;

 

First up the current season we all know about, the joint worst record only helped by Everton matching us on the final day!

 

21/22

 

How about the season prior to that though?

 

20/21

 

 

The 6th worst in this season, though better than the current season by 7. Arguably if we had "only" conceded 12 instead of 19, we would have qualified for the Europa League or Conference League this time round.

 

But now things get very interesting. Let's go to 19/20.

 

19/20

 

In Rodger's first full season here, despite the massive choke at the end, we had the joint best set piece defensive record. Better than Man City AND Liverpool's!

 

And then let's go back even further to Puel's last season / Rodgers first season.

 

18/19

 

 

In this season, despite finishing mid-table, we had the BEST defensive record from set pieces in the division.

 

Summary

 

If you think about our back line during these seasons, what has changed? Well in the seasons that Harry Maguire was here, we were brilliant at defending set pieces. So for as maligned as he is for Man United, we can see he had a very positive effect for us. However, after leaving the Evans / Soyuncu combination in 19/20 was still very effective.

 

Ben Chilwell was also here for some of these seasons and factually our defensive record from set pieces is worse since he left. That's an interesting stat, though correlation does not always mean causation.

 

Do you want to know the biggest reason for Leicester conceding goals from set pieces defensively? Well these statistics I find the most telling:

 

 

It seems like the amount of goals we concede from set pieces is strongly correlated to the number of appearances Wilfred Ndidi makes for us in a season. Given that he is routinely in the top 10 for aerial clearances per season in previous seasons, that's probably not a surprise.

 

So if you wanted to "fix" our set piece issue, you could so a lot worse than get Ndidi fully fit. But if you really want to sort it, getting another player with high aerial clearance rate would be a good way to do it. CB would be nice, but Evans / Fofana is a great first team pairing. Hence why maybe another central midfielder with height could be a great addition.

 

Ibrahima Sangare of PSV by the way is 6 foot 2...

 

 

Great work