Finding advantages in the margins: How WSL leaders Manchester City are profiting from set pieces
Dangerous variations and training-ground routines have added huge threat to City's already-enviable attacking armoury
Manchester City’s lead at the top of the Women’s Super League now stands at nine points following their victory over London City Lionesses and Chelsea’s slip-up at home to Arsenal.
City are unbeaten since the first day of the season, and an attack which features the likes of this season’s WSL top scorer Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw, the competition’s all-time leading scorer Vivianne Miedema, England winger Lauren Hemp, Japanese international Aoba Fujino and former NWSL Most Valuable Player Kerolin has been the best in the league.
Andree Jeglertz’s side have scored the most goals and created the most expected goals (xG) with a healthy margin over second-placed Chelsea. It is not just their ability to generate shots and rack up expected goals that makes them so dangerous, but an ability to do it from any situation - be it fast breaks, corners, high turnovers of the ball or in settled possession. That kind of variation has served their array of attackers very well and has placed the club in the driving seat for a first WSL title in a decade.
One of City’s biggest sources of shots has been set pieces. In fact, City have created the most xG, shots and scored the most goals from such situations.
*Data up to matchweek 12.
This is not to say they have been relying on set pieces alone. Their 25% of shots from set pieces and 21.55% of xG from set pieces are both below the league average.
City are simply a very good attacking team who have diversified their sources of goals, embracing set pieces as an important part of that.
How do Manchester City generate shots from set pieces?
1. Aerial threats
In Rebecca Knaak and Shaw, the leaders have two of the biggest aerial threats in the game. Miedema, Jade Rose and Gracie Prior are no slouches in the air either. One of the advantages of having tall and physical aerial duellers is the option to just float a cross in the air in the confidence they will out jump defenders and get a header off.
In the example below, Japanese midfielder Yui Hasegawa looks to float in a cross into the box which swerves in front of the Leicester City defensive wall. Knaak wins the aerial battle against Shannon O’Brien and Asmita Ale and is able to generate enough power on the header to guide it to the far post.
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