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The Gunners are no longer the force they once were from set-pieces and now seem to be victims of dead-ball situations
Arsenal’s once-glorious reign as England’s set-piece masters has spectacularly crumbled, especially at the tail end of the 2024/25 season.
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What was once their secret weapon has now become a glaring weakness, and their most recent 2-1 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain has exposed just how deep the rot has set in.
Arsenal lose set-piece powers
During the most recent Premier League match against Bournemouth, it was not just one moment of carelessness that doomed the Gunners at the Emirates.
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They conceded twice from dead-ball situations, first from a long throw-in, then from a corner, which officially pushed their total set-piece goals conceded this season to 12.
Only four clubs, Wolves, Southampton, Manchester United, and Ipswich Town, have conceded more in this area in the Premier League, and all of them are currently languishing in the bottom eight of the table.
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Even more damning, nearly 39% of all their conceded goals have come from dead-ball scenarios, the highest such ratio in the Premier League.
Europe confirms the pattern as Arsenal’s set-piece nightmare continues
Arsenal’s soft underbelly has been exposed on the continent too, with Fabian Ruiz’s crucial strike for Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg coming from a poorly dealt-with free kick.
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That goal helped knock the Gunners out of Europe’s elite competition in an eventual 2-1 loss on the night and 3-1 loss on aggregate to PSG, and underlined just how costly their set-piece issues have become.
According to Opta, since the beginning of April, no Premier League team has conceded more goals from set-pieces than Arsenal’s five, a number matched only by Ipswich Town.
For a team once praised as the gold standard in set-piece execution at both ends of the pitch, this freefall into defensive chaos has turned Arsenal from kings to peasants of dead-ball situations.
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