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Set Piece Shambles Something To Smile About

Krafty

Well-Known Member
May 26, 2004
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2,099
“And Tottenham win a corner...” the commentator says and I start laughing manically. It’s not the words, but the tone of the commentator’s voice that has me chuckling away like some kind of sadist. A tone made up of hope, excitement, expectation. Doesn’t he know? Hasn’t he seen the stats? Has he not watched five minutes of a Spurs game before? Our set pieces are horrendous, and if you don’t laugh at them you’ll be crying your eyes out.

If you were to be queried about the paucity of a Tottenham set piece, you need show them only one example (although there are thousands to choose from). It is a free kick routine I shall call the ‘Kaboooooom’ free kick. A little lay off for a team mate to run on to seems simple enough to accomplish, something a group of nine year olds could master, but even this is too taxing for our lilywhites.

For those of you who don’t yet know what I’m talking about, the scenario is this. We win a free kick, anywhere between 18 and 600 yards from goal, left, right or central. Someone, Modric normally as he has the greatest technical ability, stands with one foot on the ball, and will lay it to the side, about a yard away. It must be said that this part of routine is achieved without fault.

Ten yards to one side of the ball stands the wall, fearing for their lives and genitals, and one or two opposition players who will charge down the ball as soon as it is laid off. Ten yards to the other side stands Younes Kaboul, ready willing and able to smack the leather off the ball and send it hurtling towards goal. This is where the first problem surfaces.

Despite having tried this ‘trick’, and I use the term very loosely, many hundreds of times in matches and no doubt at least twice on the training pitch (where Gomes let it slip through his hands both times), we still do not realise that if you lay the ball off before Younes has started running in it simply becomes a race between Younes and the charger(s) to see who can get to the lay off first. 65% of the time Younes strikes the ball with great vengeance and furious anger only for it to be blocked four inches later and within two seconds Friedel has possession.

The other 35% is divided between the ball crashing into the wall (10%), the ball crashing into the wall at the back of the Park Lane (24.95%), and about 0.05% of the time getting a deflection and going into the black hole that is a Tottenham corner.

Ah, a Tottenham corner. To be fair, through hook and through crook we have stumbled onto a corner routine. It’s called the near post option, and sees a corner played into the near post for Gareth Bale to run on to and do something with. Unfortunately we seemed to have shot ourselves in the foot with this one – so successful was the near post option that clubs actually decided to defend against it, the result of which has seen two-thirds of Spurs corners cut out by Tottenham’s perennial bogeyman, the ‘First Man’.

The ‘First Man’ puts an end to even the best laid plans. And by best laid plans I of course mean the aforementioned ‘near post option’, the classic ’three-bounces-before-it-reaches-the-six-yard-box’, ‘near post option 2’ (replace Bale for an other), and the always nice to see ‘shit they are hitting us on the counter’. If only there was a way past the ‘First Man’ but who can query Harry for not practising set pieces when so much else is currently wrong with the team.

It’s strange that Spurs are so awful at free kicks and corners. Gareth Bale was renowned for his free kicks for Southampton and Wales, Van der Vaart and Modric have the technical ability to hit a postage stamp fifty yards away, and with the aerial ability of players like Dawson and Kaboul how do we not get on the end of more crosses? Speaking of the French man, surely one of Newton’s laws of free kicks dictates that one day one of his efforts will go on target?

Maybe the answer lies in another French man (from Cameroon, or whatever shut up). Benny smacked the bar with his effort against United last week. He has the technical ability to get pace, power and curl on the ball, with the laid back attitude that means he won’t try anything too ambitious and won’t get put off if he doesn’t succeed. Plus it would save players surrounding the ball like a wannabe wag in a Malaga hotel room all eager to have a pop and may stop any counter attack when the opposition get the ball back.

In a way, I wish we just didn’t bother with set pieces. Let’s just get the ball moving again, and maybe try to build something on the wings or though the middle. You know how some teams leave men ‘up there’ at corners so the opposition keeps men back, maybe we should try the reverse – at corners we will leave the back four on the half way line and hope the opposition take the bait. Then we play the short ball, isolate someone, and then....jackpot.
After all, you can’t suck at set pieces if you never take them.
 

spud

Well-Known Member
Sep 2, 2003
5,850
8,794
I had been hoping that the 'Kaboom' would be varied so that Kaboul would hit the dead ball rather than the ball being rolled to him. With the power of his shot I was optimistic that the result might be the same as with the one that Alex took for Chelski. I was pleased to see that this was tried against Everton.

Unfortunately, it still went into row Z.
 

JimmyG2

SC Supporter
Dec 7, 2006
15,014
20,779
I don't know why there is such widespread hostility in general to 'short' corners.
I'm always more hopeful when Modric and Van Der Vaart or Lennon combine to open up the goal for a shot or an easier cross on goal.
Although we have some tall, strong, defenders they are not as effective as we might hope at either end of the pitch.
Sending Friedel up as we did on Saturday reeks of rank desperation.

Pleased to see you are keeping your sense of humour in the face of all this stress Krafty.
 

Kingstheman

No longer BSoDL
Mar 13, 2006
5,831
2,991
I seem to recall that Carrick used to defend near post corners pretty well for us.

He used to head away a lot there - but that's what having a 6 foot 2 midfielder with a defined role can do, I guess.
 

gloryglory

Well-Known Member
Oct 19, 2004
1,537
302
All of this is spot on, and funny to boot. For the best midfielder in the Premiership, Modric is surprisingly awful at a lot of things.
 

Krafty

Well-Known Member
May 26, 2004
4,768
2,099
Pleased to see you are keeping your sense of humour in the face of all this stress Krafty.

'Don't let the bastards grind you down'. I was going to write a serious piece, analysing our various problems and coming up with solutions that would see us win all our remaining games, with nods towards transfer targets for the summer, but I didn't have a spare week and I thought we could all do with a bit of laugh.
 

InOffMeLeftShin

Night watchman
Admin
Jan 14, 2004
15,104
9,113
Bring back the old roll back, flick up and lob volley over the wall. I reckon VDV could pull it off and it really can't be any worse.

What gets to me more than the freekicks is the corners. Utd defenders were simply knocking it out of play very purposefully knowing that we had far less threat from that than us running at them in open play. Not sure we beat the first defender once and that is ridiculous. Even if we aren't scoring from corners, we have to at least make them a threat so that we aren't just making life easy for defences.
 
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