Tuesday 10 April 2018

Should we be getting excited when AFCB win corners?

Bournemouth have scored the equal top amount of goals from corner this season in the Premier League, keeping up with Arsenal on nine goals scored. While Bournemouth are not the biggest team they have found a way of scoring from these corners and although many of the corners look wasted in games, it must be an area where the Cherries are now doing something right.
AFCB's corner movers are starting to pay off.
There is always expectation raised when the Cherries win a corner. I never quite see why it is such a great moment when the team does not beat the first man in many attempts, but something has started to click of late when corners are awarded. Against Crystal Palace the team managed an imposing 11 corners and to score from one of them is probably par for the course. It's the number of corners that Bournemouth win though rather than the high number of well-executed corners that have helped them notch up nine goals from corners.

Where Bournemouth could do with a better conversion rate is from headers. Steve Cook is the club's best headed goal scorer in having netted twice, but he is well behind Alvaro Morata who leads the field on seven. Bournemouth have been scoring along the floor though and putting in the ball from corners is clearly something that the Cherries do as well if not better than many other teams.
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Josh King was the latest AFCB player to profit from the team winning a corner and scoring. It wasn't the most skilled goal of the season, but the importance of Steve Cook getting up to compete for the first header gave him the chance to gamble at the far post and Josh's movement was enough to get to the ball first. Sometimes the simple corners are the most effective even if we still like to see those like Charlie Daniels try to hit on the volley in the early moments of the match against Crystal Palace.

While Daniels, Aké and Steve Cook have been among the goals this season, I'd like to see Simon Francis perhaps get off the mark before the end of the season. So perhaps Jason Tindall can work with the captain to have a special corner for Francis before we get to the closing game in May.

1 comment:

  1. Corner kicks are converted at a fairly low rate, but they are always exciting. TV reporters often comment that AFCB is very imaginative in its approach to corners (and free kicks as well), so obviously something that EH and the coaching staff give plenty of thought to.
    TJ

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