The beauty of having a competent set piece taker

Joe Jacobson - Wycombe’s version of Conor Hourihane. He plays left back but takes the corners (great delivery for their first goal) and penalties (cool finish under pressure).

If only we had someone who could hit a dead ball with such accuracy. Every team needs such a player and I wonder how many more goals we would have scored this season had we found one.

Well done Wycombe Wanderers and good luck in the bear pit next season. Could be a short stay but, like Burton did, they might show that a big ground and a huge budget are not necessary to stay there beyond one season.

 

I think fear of shots from free-kicks stems form Stendel and latterly Struber hauling players off for losing the ball. It's happened to Bahre, Oduor and Styles this season. Maybe that's why Mowatt is persisting with the floated sh it e.

 

Mowatt isn’t taking set plays.

The Ritz is.

 

Say no more. That's just crackers.

 

If he comes on from the bench, I think this should be piped through the PA system.

 

Been saying all season how poor our set piece deliveries are. If we’d had anyone half decent it could have resulted in at least another half dozen goals which could have brought us 3/4 points extra, the difference in stopping up or being relegated.
It needs to be a priority this summer break but I’m not holding my breath.

 

I have to say, being a team with a low budget it is key to have someone who can make the most of set plays. Oduor looks decent, so hopefully we can use him more next season.

Also having a bit of height up front. Doesn't mean you need to go direct all the time, but there have been a lot of games this season that have been close & a set play or two has undone us. Variation of tactics often turns a match round. Largely when we've won matches we'd out footballed teams that came out to play, like Fulham.

 

You're right it's a hopeful lob into box every time.

 

Wouldn't it be great if someone from the management/coaching/scouting staff at the club DID read these pages. They'd go away with mostly shakes of the head and little wry smiles but sometimes, just now and again, there is something useful/obvious written on here. Not that they are going to take any notice of course.

What do we know? We're only football supporters. Some of us have seen this problem time and time again, season after season. It hardly ever gets addressed. I can think of only two really good corner takers in my decades of suffering:

George Hamstead - unerring accuracy finding Big Winnie's head nearly every time, and resulting in plenty of goals from our young centre half
Conor Hourihane - but, then again, he had it all didn't he (eventually). All that for a measly £250K from lower league Plymouth. There will be another one sitting there somewhere, just itching to play for Barnsley and earn a big money move to the Premier League

 

I seem to remember one poster in particular persistently criticising Conor Hourihane's set pieces, claiming they were all simply floated in. The reason we'd scored so many goals from them was down to others getting on the end of the deliveries, not him!

 

I don’t think we’d score that many even if we had a good set piece taker as we’ve mainly got young players & aren’t a very tall side but it’d certainly help. Also our best header of the ball is Halme & he sits on the bench every game.

It’s baffling that given our supposed spreadsheet & stats based approach we haven’t identified & signed a player who’s good at them.

 

Ah the mythical spreadsheet. Does it exist? Just a piece of corporate smoke screening I reckon.

If there was one it should work shouldn't it? Mathematics, science - all that stuff is what football is all about!

 

Last time I posted anything tactical was on footymad in 2015. I suggested that rather than dropping Winnall and going 4-5-1 they should go 4-3-1-2 with Winnall in behind the strikers. It was before the Walsall match at home. Lee Johnson clearly listened and we lost 2-0. After that he never played 4-4-2 or any incarnation again and went back to 4-5-1 saying to fans I gave you your 4-4-2 and we can't play that formation. because Hourihane is no good in a two man midfield.

 

Mowatt's set pieces have been ***** all season, and even worse since the restart. Ritz has taken over the last 2 games and his have been equally as bad. The pair of them are two of the worst set piece takers I've seen in many a year.

 

Agree.

 

They were woeful last season too. But we scored so many from open play no one seemed to mind too much

 

Ray Charles & Stevie Wonder could do better. It is beyond belief that 2 managers I've rated have not tackled this issue.

Amongst the massive list of reasons that we have fallen short this season, this would be fairly near the top, after the obvious.

 

I agree.

But I find our performance from throw ins even more infuriating. I can accept that free kicks and corners need a certain amount of skill to take, and maybe we don't have that. However, we always - always - lose possession from throw ins. It's spectacular. I remember being 12 years old, and terrible at football, and being told that if you don't immediately get the ball from a throw-in then you're in the wrong place and you need to move. When I watch Barnsley now, whenever the opposition have a throw-in they'll take the opportunity to take back possession, or at least push it up the pitch a few yards. In almost all circumstances we just seem to use it as a yet another opportunity to hand back possession. There's absolutely no movement or urgency out there.

And while I'm on the subject, Jacob Brown might have the longest throw in the team but that doesn't mean he's got a long throw that's tactically useful. He'd be better off in the box - Rory Delap he is not.