The season before Nicolas Jover arrived at Arsenal, we scored six goals from set pieces. Eleven percent of our total. Unremarkable, unmemorable, and largely unnoticed. That was 2020/21. Four years later, the numbers look completely different.

The season-by-season record

Jover joined Arsenal on 5 July 2021. What followed is one of the most consistent statistical stories in recent Premier League history.

In 2021/22, his first season, set-piece goals jumped immediately. By 2022/23, we topped the Premier League corner-goal charts with 12. We topped it again in 2023/24, also with 12. Then again in 2024/25, with 11. Three consecutive seasons leading the division from corners alone, before a single ball was kicked in 2025/26.

In 2023/24, we scored 20 set-piece goals excluding penalties in the Premier League. The highest in the division. Sixteen of those came directly from corners, matching the all-time single-season Premier League record. Our set-piece conversion rate from corners that season exceeded 4 goals per 100 attempts. The league average sits well below that.

In 2024/25, Arsenal scored 20 set-piece goals in the Premier League again. We became only the second club in Premier League history to score 20 or more set-piece goals in consecutive seasons, after Wimbledon, who did it between 1993 and 1996.

The current season picks up where those left off. As of late January, we had scored 14 Premier League set-piece goals, accounting for 35% of our total goal haul. That percentage is higher than any Premier League title-winning team on record. Manchester United's 2007/08 champions were the closest at 27.5%. We are already past that, with games to play.

In all competitions, the figure across 2025/26 stands at 24 set-piece goals, the most of any team in Europe's top five leagues. Since the start of 2023/24 alone, Arsenal have scored 33 goals from corners in the Premier League. No other club has managed more than 20 in that same period.

The foundation of the system is the inswinging corner. This season in the Premier League, inswinging corners produce goals at a rate of 5.3% per attempt, compared to 3.6% for outswingers. Arsenal deliver 81% of their corners as inswingers, one of the highest rates in the division. The delivery alone does not explain the results. The structure in the box does.

Arsenal's most dangerous corner routines are built around Gabriel Magalhaes making central runs toward the six-yard box. Strong aerial duellers are positioned in and around the opposition's zonal cover to disrupt their setup, while back-post runners crash the defensive structure from behind. If Arsenal do not win the first contact, the attempted clearances often lack height and distance, leaving players stationed at the edge of the box to attack the second phase.

The 2025/26 season has added a new dimension. Five players stand at the edge of the box, all making decoy runs toward it, while four players remain inside. Three players at the far post carry out blocking roles against both the goalkeeper and zonal defenders, creating space in the centre for the primary target.

Jover also adjusts the system against man-marking defences, instructing players to spread across the box to stretch the structure and isolate individual defenders in one-on-one situations. He has been known to instruct short corners on the first dead ball of each half to force the opposition to adjust before switching back to the main routines.

Arsenal's net set-piece position this season stands at plus nine. They have scored 14 and conceded five. Liverpool, for comparison, sit at minus ten, having conceded 13 set-piece goals while scoring only three.

Before Jover arrived, Arsenal had conceded 15 set-piece goals in 2019/20. The defensive improvement is as significant as the attacking numbers, though it receives far less attention.

Fifteen out of 20 Premier League clubs now employ specialist set-piece coaches. Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, and Chelsea have all appointed specialists in direct response to the data-driven model Jover pioneered. They are chasing a system that has now had four years to embed itself into the squad.

Opposing managers know exactly what is coming. Every analyst in the division has studied the runs, the blocking patterns, the delivery shapes. Arsenal have topped the set-piece charts for four consecutive seasons and the rest of the league has had four years to respond. The gap has not closed.

That is the part that gets lost when pundits frame this as a simple tactic. Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports that every time Arsenal win a corner, his head goes in his hands. That reaction tells you more than he intended. When an experienced analyst's instinct is dread rather than tactical curiosity after four years of the same system, it means the system is working at a level that knowledge alone cannot counter.

The record that places this in full context belongs to Manchester United. Ferguson's 2012/13 side set the benchmark for most set-piece goals scored by a Premier League title-winning team, with 23 in a single season. Arsenal, as things stand in 2025/26, are on course to surpass that total.

In the Premier League this season, Arsenal's set-piece and own-goal contribution already represents a higher percentage of their total goal haul than any title-winning campaign in the history of the competition. The previous record holders are Manchester United. Arsenal are not approaching their record. They have already moved past the percentage threshold.

What makes this four-year run statistically unusual is the consistency of dominance rather than the peaks. Most teams lead a single category for one season before regression pulls them back. Arsenal have led the Premier League set-piece charts in 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25, and again in 2025/26 with games still to play. In all competitions this season, they have scored 24 set-piece goals, more than any other team in Europe's top five leagues. The clubs who appointed their own set-piece specialists in direct response to Jover's model are still chasing numbers Arsenal posted two seasons ago. The net position tells the full story. Arsenal have scored 14 Premier League set-piece goals this season and conceded five. A net of plus nine. That combination, dominant at both ends of dead-ball situations, is the part that never gets credited in the coverage.

Four seasons. Four times at the top. The clubs copying the model are still four seasons behind it.