10 hours ago
11
The Premier League’s sporting directors have held talks about the ubiquity of set-piece goals and holding in the penalty area, amid concerns these trends are damaging the spectacle.
Liverpool’s head coach, Arne Slot, said this week that his “football heart doesn’t like it”, when asked about the growing importance of set pieces, which have been responsible for 27.1% of Premier League goals this season, excluding penalties.
The top flight’s sporting directors meet regularly as well as holding formal discussion, and the issue of set pieces has been a recent topic of conversation.
Club managers and captains also have regular dialogue in meetings that inform the creation of the Premier League’s so-called Football Principles, which affect how games are refereed. The Premier League also consults all stakeholders, including fans, each year through its Football Survey, which can also lead to changes.
The refereeing body Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO) instituted a clampdown on players holding in the penalty area for this season after talks with the Premier League last summer. This has resulted in nine penalties being awarded for holding at set pieces, compared with four at the same stage of last season. Twelve penalties have been given for holding this season if non-set-piece incidents are included, a rise from nine last season.
Referees are acting on instructions from the Premier League to penalise holding, but are hampered by the fact that under the laws of the game they cannot award free-kicks when the ball is not in play, so jostling and pushing before corners in particular is commonplace.
Arsenal’s pursuit of their first Premier League title in 22 years has been fuelled by their set-piece prowess, with dead-ball situations producing 22 of their 59 goals, including 16 from corners, which has led to criticism from other managers.
Brighton’s head coach, Fabian Hürzeler, criticised the time Arsenal spend preparing for corners, which with an average restart time of 44.4 seconds is the longest in the Premier League, before their 1-0 defeat by the leaders on Wednesday and suggested time limits be introduced.
Referees will use a five-second countdown for throw-ins and goalkicks if they think a player is time-wasting from next season after a change to the laws by the International Football Association Board last weekend.
Opta reported this week that 18% of goals in the Premier League this season have come from corners, the highest in the competition’s history.
The Premier League has the highest number of set-piece goals in Europe’s top five leagues this season. Serie A (24%) is second, followed by the Bundesliga (22%), La Liga (19%) and Ligue 1 (17%).
