The Near Post Corner

[dom9]

As perfected by George Graham's Arsenal.

This Rory Delap business has got thinking about the old days.

For those too young to remember, the tactic was to drill the corner into the near post area with great pace, where one or two attackers (or Tony Adams)would be waiting to flick it on, with further attackers following up to bundle the ball in.

This was just about as undefendable as it could get bar winning a penalty. Arsenal were famous (and possibly reviled) for perfecting it, but many others followed, and it became a real method of scoring goals. For some reason it died out in the 90s, and has never seen comeback. I wonder why?

For that matter, I couldn't understand why teams couldn't defend it either. Similar to Mr Delap's throw-ins indeed.

[Kenneth]

I think it required a bit of blocking the keeper which gets pulled up now. Maybe.

[Gingawaria]

I saw Coventry pull off a pretty good example of one last night actually. The ball was drilled towards the near post, a Coventry player flicked it on for Clinton Morrison who knocked it in.

[Matt]

It's a good point - any delivery into the box with pace should be more dangerous than a floater.

Gerrard and Alonso rarely beat the first man anyway so it'd be perfect for them

[The_weatherman]

Nevermind.....

[RedProf]

Does anyone do the old Wimbledon routine at corners any more? Line up about 7 or 8 big men at the edge of the box, knock the corner towards the penalty spot, and the lads charge in en masse. We adopted that corner for our Saturday team and the other teams just couldn't cope with it. We were worth a goal a game thanks to that routine

[Joe King]

Very good topic and very topical to say the least

Having seen Delap's assists if we can call them that, they hit the back post which causes confusion for the goalkeeper. Arsenal tragically calculated the risk horribly wrong on Saturday. The first was awful from all the defenders as it was bundled in somehow. The second from Seyi Olofinjana was woeful. The ball was allowed to bounce before he could somehow get some contact on it.

With near post corners, to defend against them, you would just put your best defender on the front post followed by the goalkeeper and a covering second defender from half goal to back post with a defender on front post cover.

[Tee]

In general I believe the art of heading has really died over the past 20 or so years. There are nowhere near the amount of spectacular headers from corners, free kicks and open play as there used to be.

[Big Dave]

I think the main problem is that most teams these days can't seem to get the corner kick past the first defender. On the whole I think that corner "routines" are pretty ****ing pathetic.