Set Piece Drills

Set pieces are the free goals lazy coaches ignore. A quarter to a third of goals at youth and high school level come from a dead ball, and the average team spends about four minutes a season on them, usually in the week of a cup game, usually badly.

Ten minutes a week. That's the whole ask. Ten minutes, every week, and by October you have two corner routines everyone knows and a defensive setup that doesn't collapse when a tall lad walks up.

Attacking first. You need one near-post routine and one far-post routine, and that's genuinely enough. Near post flick-on is the highest-percentage corner in the game because it only asks one player to win one header in a crowd. Far post is where your unmarked player is, always, because everyone follows the ball. Add short corner combinations for the games where they put a man on your taker.

Defending is mostly organisation, and the argument about zonal versus man-marking is less important than everyone deciding which one you're doing. Defending corners zonal man exists to settle it in one session. Get the wall right too — defensive wall organisation is fifteen minutes that will save you a goal a season, minimum.

Two underused ones. The long throw, if you have someone who can genuinely reach the six-yard box, is a corner you get several times a game. And penalties. Penalty pressure ladder is on here because penalty practice with nothing at stake teaches nothing, and the ladder puts something at stake.

Rehearse them until they're boring. Boring is the point.