Santiago Bueno’s goal for Wolves on Saturday<\/a> was the 12th time in 18 matches Arne Slot’s side had conceded from a corner, free-kick or throw-in, no team in Europe’s top five leagues has conceded more.<\/p>\nLiverpool have not conceded more than 15 in an entire season since the 2015-16 campaign. Conversely, they have scored just three from set-pieces.<\/p>\n
Therefore, it is understood an intervention was required with both the club and Briggs, a former Manchester City analyst who took over set-piece duties exclusively in September, reaching an agreement over his exit.<\/p>\n
But Slot and his coaching staff, who will now take on the responsibility for set-pieces, accept that the decision to part ways will not be a “silver bullet” which will immediately solve the issues.<\/p>\n
“Having joined the club in July 2024 – initially in the role of individual development coach – Briggs contributed to our Premier League title success last season as a member of Arne Slot’s backroom staff,” said a statement from Liverpool.<\/p>\n
“He leaves with the appreciation and best wishes of everyone at the club.”<\/p>\n
The statistics relating to Liverpool’s set-piece performance are well below what would normally be expected.<\/p>\n
Only 18th-placed West Ham (10) have conceded more than Liverpool’s seven from corners. Their three goals conceded from throw-ins is the joint-most in the league alongside Newcastle.<\/p>\n
According to Opta, Liverpool are averaging 2.4 goals scored per 100 set-pieces. Only Brentford are averaging fewer in the top flight, while Liverpool are averaging 8.2 goals per 100 when it comes to conceding – only Nottingham Forest, in 17th, average more.<\/p>\n
It means their set-piece balance of minus nine is Liverpool’s worst at any stage of a season in their Premier League history and in their last two matches against Tottenham and Wolves they were comfortable at 2-0 before conceding set-pieces, which hugely changed the momentum and left Slot’s side hanging on.<\/p>\n
A week ago Slot said of that one statistic: “It’s impossible to be top-four, top-five with our set-piece balance, let alone winning the league…if you look at that you could say how special it is we have as many points as we have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool’s set-piece coach Aaron Briggs has paid the price for the team’s woeful performance in that area this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-258272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115809328548677867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}