Liverpool have become a set-piece team. And that’s OK

Anfield has spent decades romanticising swashbuckling, high-tempo football, so the notion that Liverpool might now be nicking results from a corner or a long throw feels almost sacrilegious. Yet the numbers are impossible to ignore: Arne Slot’s side have just become the first team in Premier League history to score seven consecutive non-penalty goals from set plays, a run that culminated in the 5-2 dismantling of West Ham United in which three first-half goals arrived directly from corners.

Rewind to August and the scenario felt preposterous. While rivals bulked up on aerial specialists and specialist coaches, Liverpool’s summer strategy appeared to drift toward the technical and the transitional. By New Year’s Eve, when set-piece coach Aaron Briggs departed, Liverpool had scored only three league goals from dead-ball situations and leaked 12. Something had to give.

Since the calendar flipped to 2026, the transformation has been startling: nine scored, three conceded, and a dressing-room belief that every corner or wide free-kick is a genuine event. The watershed moment arrived at St James’ Park on Boxing Day, Ibrahima Konaté thrashing in a late corner to seal a 4-1 win over Newcastle. Dominik Szoboszlai’s dipping free-kick against Manchester City followed, before Virgil van Dijk and Alexis Mac Allister delivered 1-0 victories against Sunderland and Nottingham Forest courtesy of a corner and a throw-in respectively.

West Ham merely completed the theme. Van Dijk’s towering header from an inswinging corner made it 2-1; the opener and the third showcased improvisation rather than choreography, Ryan Gravenberch twice keeping the ball alive before Hugo Ekitike teed up the first, and the Dutchman later cushioning Van Dijk’s near-post flick for Mac Allister to volley home at the far stick.

Slot, once weary of fielding questions about set-piece frailty, now welcomes the topic. “Maybe one or two small details have changed defensively and offensively,” he admitted after the Hammers win. “Our setup is slightly different, but the biggest reason is that things go back to normal. We created chances earlier in the season and every one we conceded seemed to go in. Now the opposite is happening.”

Purists may bristle, but pragmatism reigns. With a £125 million summer striker sidelined, a creative No 10 nursing injury and wide forwards misfiring, Liverpool have simply followed the league’s broader drift toward physicality and structured restarts. The early goal from a corner against West Ham forced the visitors to abandon their low block, freeing space for the blistering transitions that characterised the second-half surge.

History reassures, too. Under Jürgen Klopp, set-piece efficiency underpinned three title tilts: 22 goals in 2018-19, 17 in 2019-20, 19 in 2021-22. The difference then was balance; Liverpool were never defined by them. Slot’s next challenge is to restore that equilibrium while open-play fluency rebuilds.

For now, the numbers justify the method: six wins in seven across all competitions, Champions League progression secured via dead-ball ruthlessness, and a late-season surge that few predicted when corners were costing points rather than earning them. Liverpool arrived late to the Premier League’s set-piece party, but they are suddenly the last ones dancing.