Declan Rice has pushed back against what he called disproportionate criticism of Arsenal\u2019s use of set pieces, saying the attention stems from the team doing them well. Rice told The i Paper he found the reaction puzzling. \u201cEveryone talks about it and then everyone does it\u2014so it\u2019s confusing!\u201d he said. \u201cBut they\u2019re not doing it to the level that we do it. You can see that when you\u2019re seeing teams take corners. We can still get better and that\u2019s the good thing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The debate has been heightened in recent weeks. After Arsenal beat Chelsea 2\u20131 earlier this month in a match that produced three set-piece goals, Liverpool manager Arne Slot criticised the direction of the modern game, insisting it was \u201cnot a pleasure \u201d to watch as he questioned the reluctance to punish excess physicality in the penalty area.<\/p>\n
Tottenham Hotspur winger Mathys Tel echoed those concerns during an appearance on ZACK, describing corners as chaotic. \u201cWe\u2019re all bunched together, everyone\u2019s pushing, knocking each other to the ground, holding on to each other,\u201d Tel lamented. \u201cForget it. The goalkeeper can no longer get out, he can no longer see.\u201d He added a broader observation on the league: \u201cI\u2019m going to tell the truth, yes [it\u2019s less exciting]. In the sense that it\u2019s no longer a show, it\u2019s really annoying to watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are fewer spectacles. There isn\u2019t a Vinicius [Junior] pulling off a sombrero, dribbling past you, or a Kylian [Mbapp\u00e9] bursting past you. Here, I\u2019d say it\u2019s more structured, maybe too much so, with clear ideas, all the set pieces, little details that can sometimes make the difference. But sometimes you think it might be too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
That critique met public defence from Wayne Rooney on his self-titled podcast. Rooney, Manchester United\u2019s all-time top scorer, praised Arsenal\u2019s approach and argued coaches should exploit set pieces. \u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of people talking about Arsenal and the way they\u2019re playing but I think they\u2019ve been brilliant,\u201d Rooney argued. \u201cThe set pieces are part of football\u2014why would you not use it? They put bodies in the box, if teams aren\u2019t clever enough or haven\u2019t got the players to deal with it, why wouldn\u2019t Arsenal continue to do that?<\/p>\n
\u201cI would be doing it even more if I was Mikel Arteta. It\u2019s part of the game and I love it. They don\u2019t have to change anything. They maybe haven\u2019t scored as many goals from open play as they would like but they\u2019ve made up for it in other ways. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Declan Rice questions selective criticism of Arsenal’s set-piece success and wider tactical debate..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,190,175,179,172,187],"tags":[1162,299],"class_list":["post-8094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-chelsea","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-epl","category-tottenham-hotspur","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}