5 hours ago
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Mikel Arteta said he has been masterminding Arsenal’s set-piece success for the past 10 years, starting from when he was a player at the club.
Since the beginning of the 2023-24 season, Arteta’s side have scored a mammoth 43 Premier League goals from set-pieces, 10 more than next-best side Everton (33).
This season alone, the Gunners have struck 10-set-piece goals, excluding penalties, from 12 matches across all competitions as they have blown opposition away with the help of specialist coach Nicolas Jover, who joined in July 2021.
Arteta retired as a player at Arsenal in the 2014-15 campaign but had cottoned on to how set-pieces would revolutionise the game whilst doing his coaching badges.
Ahead of Arsenal’s league match against Crystal Palace on Sunday, Arteta said: ‘Ten years ago I said it's a massive thing to do that (master set-pieces). I started to have a vision and tried to implement a method and tried to be surrounded by the best people to deliver that.
‘I went to City with the best manager in the world and I could see where we could have improvements. It was clear because at some point I was doing that (working on set-pieces) and I wasn't the best person in the world to do it.
Mikel Arteta says he has been masterminding Arsenal's extraordinary set-pieces for 10 years
Alongside coach Nicolas Jover, he has made Arsenal the most prolific set-piece scorers
Arteta is 'obsessed' with finding advantages and has been thinking through his ideas since his playing days (pictured in 2015)
‘So if I'm not the best person in the world to do it and have the best method to do it, there are ways to improve it. And you could see that straight afterwards when it started to happen. But it's not about being only obsessed with that.
‘It’s the eagerness to constantly find ways to develop your team, to evolve your team and to give your players more tools to be more unpredictable and especially more efficient. That's it.’
On if set-pieces are more important than other ways of scoring, he added: ‘It doesn't mean that it's more important - it’s equally important.
‘You have to really dominate and that's the opportunity to hurt your opposition.
‘So we have to train and make sure that the things that are good for us happen very, very often because it will be more difficult for the opponent. But I think everybody tries to do the same.’
