Arsenal: 4 far too early takeaways from pre-season

2. Andreas Georgson, Please Come Back

You can’t have everything in life, and neither in football it seems.

Last season Arsenal were rocks in defensive set pieces. Superb at them. It was unbelievably refreshing.

Last season Arsenal were also atrocious at attacking set pieces. Woeful at them. It was excruciatingly unpalatable.

There are two sides to ‘set piece specialist’ job and Andreas Georgson nailed one half of it: no team conceded fewer than the Gunners’ five goals from set pieces in the top-flight last season, a full ten fewer than the season before.

However, scoring a grand total of six (two were direct free-kicks) saw a 50% drop off from 2019/20. Crowding the goalkeeper for out-swinging corners? There is a Jackie Chan meme to be used somewhere here.

In three pre-season matches the new man on the block, Nicolas Jover, has watched on as Arsenal have conceded three goals from set pieces and looked shaky at most of the other ones. Even if Millwall’s goal wouldn’t class as a set piece goal, it arrived shortly after a poorly defended corner.

So thankfully it’s only three matches in pre-season and completely over the top to assume that Arsenal will concede from dead balls every week and Georgson will watch on from his home in Malmo staring at his phone waiting for Arteta’s call only to let it go to voicemail.

Jover will sort it out. No panic.