What Corners and Set Pieces Tell You About Match Outcomes
When most people think about predicting football scores, they focus on open play - who creates more chances, who has the better attack, which defence leaks goals. That is perfectly reasonable, but it misses a significant part of the picture. Set pieces - corners, free kicks, throw-ins, and penalties - account for roughly 30-35% of all goals in the Premier League every season. That is not a small number.
If you are ignoring set piece data when making your predictions, you are effectively ignoring a third of where goals come from. And unlike open play quality, which tends to correlate with overall team strength, set piece ability can vary wildly even among teams at similar levels. Some mid-table sides are lethal from corners. Some top-six clubs are surprisingly poor. This is where prediction edges come from.
Corners: The Most Common Set Piece
The average Premier League match produces around 10-11 corners. The conversion rate - corners that directly lead to goals - sits at roughly 3-4%. That means you should expect one corner-kick goal every three matches or so. It sounds low, but across a full gameweek of ten matches, that is three or four goals from corners alone.
The teams that are best at scoring from corners tend to share certain characteristics:
- Tall, physical players who win aerial duels consistently
- A reliable delivery specialist who can put the ball on a sixpence
- Well-rehearsed routines that create mismatches in the box
- A good second-ball game - ready to pounce on rebounds and half-clearances
Conversely, teams that defend corners poorly tend to be smaller, less physical sides that struggle with aerial duels. If a physically dominant team is playing a team that concedes a lot of corners and defends them badly, the probability of a set piece goal goes up meaningfully.
Free Kicks and Their Impact
Direct free kick goals are rarer than you might think. Only a handful are scored each Premier League season from direct shots. The real value of free kicks is the indirect threat - the delivery into the box, the second ball, the knockdown header. These work much like corners and follow similar patterns.
Where free kicks really matter for predictions is in how they interact with . Home teams tend to win more free kicks in attacking positions, partly because of referee bias and partly because home teams tend to press higher. This gives physically strong home teams an extra route to goal that away teams do not enjoy as much.
