AFC Bournemouth head coach Gary O’Neil has confessed that the Cherries need to vastly improve their defensive record next season and work will continue over the remainder of this campaign to try and make things better before some more comprehensive answers can be found during pre-season.
AFC Bournemouth’s frailties from set-pieces has been evident all season and has failed to be addressed under Gary O’Neil’s regime.
The Cherries have conceded 27 times from set-pieces more than any other club in the top flight of English football.
The breakdown comes via six penalties and a further 21 goals direct from set plays, failing to defend corners, free-kicks and throw-ins.
If there was an additional breakdown that included crosses from open-play, the Cherries wouldn’t be looking great from this statistic either.
O’Neil told the Daily Echo…
“We’ve struggled with defending balls in the box, which is why the West Ham game was so tricky for us, because they put a lot in there.
“We have struggled with that this season. We’re obviously aware of it, as I’m sure all you guys are, and something we need to improve.
“But I’m hopeful that we can put some work in now, week-to-week, as we are, but then we can put things in place for next season to make us much stronger in that area.”
Your say…
Matt Stevenson said…
I’ve put in two graphs related to xG conceded. The first shows the total xG divided into open play and set pieces for a reference.. Unsurprisingly, AFCB are one of the teams with the highest xG conceded (third behind Everton and Leeds). However, in terms of the split of xG conceded that is set pieces, AFCB are only marginally worse than the other teams, we have 26% with the weighted average of the other teams being 25%.
