If Liverpool are serious about fixing their set-piece problems, they must now hire a specialist on that aspect of the game or risk losing further ground to their rivals.
It came as no real surprise that the Premier League champions have parted company with Aaron Briggs, given the shocking returns from the department he has been fronting up this season.
Briggs was tasked with keeping the set-piece numbers strong after impressing in a wider-ranging coaching role last season, but Liverpool have conceded 12 times from dead-ball situations in the 2025-26 Premier League and only scored three themselves, leading to consternation in press conferences from head coach Arne Slot, who says it’s “impossible” to compete with those above them in the table when there is such a negative imbalance.
Slot shoulders a degree of responsibility as the head coach, but hasn’t been so forthcoming in expanding on that publicly. And now Briggs is out, it will initially fall on the remaining members of the coaching staff — such as Sipke Hulshoff and Giovanni van Bronckhorst — to put an end to their dead-ball deficiencies.
That minus-nine balance is already Liverpool’s worst at any stage of a season in the 33-year Premier League era, and no team in Europe’s top five domestic leagues have conceded more set-piece goals than them. Liverpool also look particularly poor when defending against corners, with only West Ham United (10) conceding more goals from those situations than their total of seven.
Yet perhaps it’s the attacking figures — an average of 2.4 goals scored per 100 set plays — that have forced the club into a rethink. Although Briggs was a useful member of the coaching team during the 2024-25 title success, he did not take on this season’s role as an ‘expert’ in the field.
Granted, the 38-year-old was well qualified generally, following spells as the assistant at top-flight German side Wolfsburg and tactical analysis coach, assistant coach and head of football methodology at Monaco of France’s Ligue 1, following nine years in various roles at Manchester City. But the opportunity only came about after an unsuccessful search for a specialist was ended in September and the club’s owners at Fenway Sports Group (FSG) assigned Briggs to the role instead.
Aaron Briggs, right, seemed to lose the faith of head coach Arne Slot (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Before that, Liverpool had placed job adverts on LinkedIn as they scoured the market for a suitable candidate. Several set-piece analysts held discussions with the Premier League’s title winners over the summer but were not convinced they would be given full authority to implement their ideas.
Slot’s Feyenoord colleague, Etienne Reijnen, was initially expected to follow him across from that Dutch club to Anfield when he was appointed in the summer of 2024 but work permit complications put an end to that.
Now, perhaps more than ever, the need to recruit a recognised best-in-class replacement — or at the very least, a proven specialist — is greater, at least to show that Liverpool understand they must catch up with what is a growing trend in today’s game.
While there’s no specific set-piece coaching course, or qualification, there are people within football who have dedicated considerable time to making a difference in this department and are waiting for an opportunity.
Including penalties, 54 per cent of the Premier League goals conceded by Liverpool this season have been from set pieces, and for a team with two physical powerhouses in Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate to aim for, they should also be doing better at dead balls from an attacking point of view.
It’s not just as simple as bringing in a replacement and expecting them to settle in, though.
The set-piece position is often seen as a stepping stone for a bigger role, as underlined by the progress of Keith Andrews at Brentford, who was promoted to head coach when Thomas Frank took the Tottenham job in the summer. Changing the culture is also a difficult task, especially when an existing head coach or manager has their own ideas, and many players are not overly receptive to the grind of extra set-piece work on the training pitch.
But the clubs who manage to get it right tend to reap the rewards.
Nicolas Jover at Arsenal and Aston Villa’s Austin MacPhee have significantly improved those teams at dead-ball situations through a dedication to set plays and years of individual focus.
Nicolas Jover, right, assumes huge significance when Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are facing or taking a set piece (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Jover takes centre-stage at Arsenal whenever they win an attacking set piece or face a threatening defensive one — often standing in front of manager Mikel Arteta in the technical area to direct operations — while MacPhee, who has also been hired by Roberto Martinez to join his Portugal staff ahead of the World Cup next summer, is creative, forward-thinking, and brilliant at building relationships with players.
Chelsea’s Bernardo Cueva also has years of dedicated experience, after joining from Brentford in 2024 for £750,000, while Newcastle United hired Martin Mark in the summer from Midtjylland, a Danish club who have made set pieces a core component of training (rather than an afterthought) for over a decade.
Manchester City, meanwhile, hired Liverpool’s former set-piece analyst James French over the summer and promoted him to set-piece coach after 13 years at Anfield. French is described as a “set-piece obsessive” and may still be missed at Liverpool, although they did replace him on the staff with Lewis Mahoney, from relegated Southampton.
In recent years, many analysts have made the natural progression to become a coach-analyst, so that might be an area Liverpool choose to explore when they consider a replacement for Briggs.
Given their recent difficulties, this next appointment will be crucial.
With so much scrutiny now on goals from dead-ball deliveries, and the fact teams’ set-piece coaches these days are often more recognised than other assistants, the importance of such a role should not be underestimated.