Arne Slott welcomed Liverpool’s efficiency from set pieces in their 1-0 win over Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. “Usually we concede a goal but tonight we could score and that’s the difference for us in this game,” he told a news conference.

Virgil van Dijk headed home a Mohamed Salah pass in the second half, effectively Liverpool’s third goal from a corner in their last four Premier League games. But their four-game total this season remains the fifth-lowest in the Premier League.

Slott cited the cost of failing to capitalize on set-pieces in fringe games earlier in the season, citing their draws with fellow promoted sides Leeds United and Burnley. So, what has changed?

Embrace post players

Their newfound effectiveness is no coincidence.

Rather, it is the result of a drastic change in approach.

The first of Liverpool’s last three goals came from corners before last month’s loss to Bournemouth, when Liverpool had the lowest proportion of inswinging passes in the Premier League at 49.4 per cent, well below the average of around 70 per cent.

In the next four games, their shooting percentage soared to 82.5%, with 28 of the 34 corner kicks against Bournemouth, Newcastle, Manchester City and Sunderland coming from inside forwards.

Coincidentally or not, the shift in focus following the departure of set-piece coach Aaron Briggs at the end of December has clearly been fruitful, with Liverpool scoring three goals from 34 corners, compared to just one from 117 previously this season.

It is worth noting that even if a goal is scored forward The emphasis changed in the win over Brighton on December 13 when Salah fed an inswinging ball for Hugo Ekitic.

Ekitic’s goal, like Van Dijk’s goals against Sunderland and Bournemouth, came from inside the six-yard box, underscoring one of the main advantages of an inswinging shot: its trajectory favors close-range shots.

It’s not an exact science. There are of course other factors to consider. But generally speaking, the closer to the goal, the higher the probability of scoring. By using more inside forwards, Liverpool are able to target the six-yard box more often.

A comparison of corner kick locations before and after the Bournemouth game shows an increase in the percentage of passes into more dangerous areas, with a clear concentration in the center of the six-yard box, just above the goalkeeper.

The popularity and greater efficiency of in-swinging corners is evident up and down the Premier League, with 5% of all in-swinging corners leading to goals this season, compared to just 3.6% of out-swinging corners.

Packing six size box

It’s not just a matter of corner kick target areas.

How you capture these areas is equally important.

Increasingly, Premier League teams are basing large numbers of players inside the six-yard box at corner kicks, maximizing the chances of winning first contact from close quarters while also making it harder for the opposition goalkeeper to receive the ball or hit the ball.

The approach, coined by analyst Michael Caley as the “wall of flesh”, has been adopted to good effect by Arsenal and now also by Liverpool, with Van Dijk one of five Liverpool players to header a ball into a congested six-yard box against Sunderland.

The goal came from Liverpool’s 10th corner kick of the night, but the same approach was evident earlier in the game.

Ten of Liverpool’s 11 corner kicks came from inside forwards, with the only exception being Salah’s short corner in stoppage time as he tried to bring the score closer.

As you can see below, on the first corner kick of the night, Liverpool’s players started running from outside the six-yard box. But Liverpool changed tack after Salah’s pass was easily headed home by the unmarked Sunderland centre-back Dan Ballard.

From that point on, they had at least three players inside the six-yard box for every corner Sunderland took.

Those passes proved much more difficult for Sunderland to defend, with Van Dijk heading over the crossbar from Cody Gakpo’s pass and Ibrahima Konate narrowly missing the end of another Gakpo center forward before eventually scoring the decisive goal.

The success of this approach, exemplified by Van Dijk’s goal, helps explain why Premier League teams are increasingly sending corners into the six-yard box.

In fact, the number of corners taken into the six-yard box has increased over the past five Premier League seasons, reaching a new high of 4.72 per game this season, as more teams (including Liverpool) try to maximize their chances of success from set-pieces.

For Slott, the result was victory in a game his Liverpool side might have previously drawn, and encouragement that what was his weakness may now be one of his strengths.