Joe Masi and Luke Hatfield discussed all of the latest West Bromwich Albion news on the most recent edition of The Express and Star’s Baggies Broadcast podcast and one topic of discussion that came up during the show was West Brom’s tactics from corner kicks.
Baggies playmaker Matheus Pereira was criticised for playing ‘infuriating’ short corners in the West Midlands club’s 1-0 Premier League win over Sheffield United this past weekend.
BirminghamLive gave the Brazilian a 9/10 rating for his performance at the weekend but his use of short corners was the one aspect of his performance that was highlighted as a negative.
Masi also slated the Baggies’ tactical decision to play as many short corners as they did versus the Blades during this recent edition of The Express and Star’s Baggies Broadcast podcast, saying: (42:43)
“If it doesn’t come up this week I will bring it up next week about short corners because it is ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Especially when they look so threatening from them – don’t waste your corners, like it’s just ridiculous.”
Do you think West Brom used too many short corners vs Sheffield United?
YES
NO
TIF Thoughts on what Masi had to say about West Brom’s use of short corners…
Taking a short corner would naturally give the man on the end of the initial pass a different crossing angle to the one that the set-piece taker originally had and if Slaven Bilic and his coaching staff feel that mixing up the delivery of balls into the box like this will be good for West Brom’s ability to score from corners in the long run, then perhaps these tactics shouldn’t be written off so quickly.
As per WhoScored, West Brom are strong in aerial duels and so, perhaps scoring from corners is one area that they should look to exploit and it would seem as though the Baggies are trying to do this by attempting different things from corners, other than sending the ball directly into the box every time.
It remains to be seen whether or not their use of short corners proves to work out in the long run but perhaps the concept shouldn’t be dismissed just because they were unsuccessful at scoring via this tactic versus the Blades, with their only goal in that game (0:05) coming after a direct corner.