Setting The Play

How a game model with less possession and control has consequences for opposition set piece opportunity.

In a World Cup likely to be hampered by extreme weather, we may well see a glut of opportunities resulting from corners and set pieces. Fast open play will be tricky to maintain in such high temperatures, and reliance on the slow, considered build up taken to set up for a set play, may well become a major route to chances.

If spending 45 seconds watching Declan Rice trudge across the field for yet another long throw or punt into the box is not your idea of entertainment, you probably have not been a fan of the English Premier League (EPL) this season. Set pieces accounted for 28% of all EPL goals, the highest ratio since 2009-10. Clubs increasingly hire not only set piece specialist coaches but even throw in coaches and we’ve had the world’s best on our pod in Thomas Gronnemark.

In particular corners are the area of focus with sophisticated blocking strategies, and an increase in crowding huge, athletic beasts on top of the goalkeepers.

Even in Scotland, headed goals has increased from 78 in 2023-34 to 102 in 2024-45 and 100 in 2025-26.

Some teams have relied on set plays more than others with challengers Heart of Midlothian and The Rangers racking up 23 set piece goals, and Dundee United scoring 42% of all goals from restart situations.

Celtic, with recent traditions of smaller, more technical players and an emphasis on ball retention and space control, have been very much an outlier in not adhering to those trends for increasing set piece focus.

Celtic are by no means the least effective in generating xG from set pieces, mainly due to the volume of attacking and time spent in the oppositions defensive third. But it isn’t a priority like it is for the teams above them in this chart.

Which is by way of introduction to a review of Celtic’s set piece performance over the season.