Ryan O’HanlonApr 3, 2026, 06:31 AM ETCloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on XMultiple Authors
Pep Guardiola: Everyone needs to adapt to set pieces (1:41)Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola believes Premier League teams need to adapt to Arsenal’s set piece threat from corners. (1:41)
The first five weeks: Liverpool look likely to repeat
Weeks 21 through 25: Two new managers at Chelsea and Man United; only two teams at the top
This season? That number is down to 615 — a 20% decrease. If we just compare it to last season, it’s a 23% decrease. That’s not an ebb, nor a flow — it’s a tidal wave.
Amidst such a tectonic tactical shift, Arsenal are fitting champions-to-be. They recognized the true value of set-piece goals before almost anyone else, and they’re riding their all-time-great dominance on that end of the field to what’s likely to be their first title in over 20 years. The Gunners have scored 21 goals from set plays and conceded just eight — the margin of plus-13 is more than twice that of second-best Manchester United’s set-play differential of plus-six.
What would this Premier League season have looked like without set plays? And what might we have to look forward to? To find out, I went through this season and removed all goals from free kicks, corner kicks, and throw-ins from the statistical record — and then went back and calculated how it would’ve changed the result of every Premier League match from this season.
Let’s see what both the Premier League table and the story of this season look like when no set piece goals had ever been scored.
The massive summer spending spree at Anfield looks like it’s paying off for Liverpool. The defending champs have a three-point lead atop the table, and they’ve scored the most goals of any team in the league.
But this is what happens when Arsenal play: they tie. Commentators have begun to wonder if Mikel Arteta has become his generation’s Jose Mourinho — a manager capable of instituting a style that eliminates losses but can’t generate enough wins to ever capture a league title.
Through five matches, after their own massive spending spree, the Gunners have conceded only one goal, and they’ve scored five, but that low-event style has led to two wins and three draws. They’re in sixth — four points back of first place.
Biggest beneficiaries of the set-piece-free world: Chelsea, Sunderland, Brighton, and Burnley all have two more points
After revamping at least half the roster over the past two transfer windows, Manchester City finally look like they might be back to their best. Their plus-14 goal differential is by far tops in the league.
After losing two of their first three to Brighton and Tottenham, they’ve gone undefeated over the next seven matches, with five wins and two draws — away at Arsenal and at Aston Villa. They’re only one point back of the leaders Liverpool.
Arsenal have risen up to fourth, three points back of Liverpool, and they’ve still only conceded a solitary goal through 10 matches. This might be the best defensive team we’ve ever seen, and they’re the only undefeated team left in England’s top flight. Unfortunately, they’ve only scored eight goals — the fifth-fewest in the league.
This was supposed to be a free-flowing, effervescent attack with all of the talent added over the summer, but some observers have started to wonder whether or not Liverpool manager Arne Slot was riding the good vibes of the Jurgen Klopp era in his first season with the club. Can his version of Liverpool generate the same attacking threat as his predecessor’s did?
Liverpool have now gone three full games without scoring a goal. They eventually get back on track — and back to being themselves — with a thrilling 3-2 win over Leeds at Elland Road, but we’re 15 games into the season and Premier League record signing Alexander Isak is yet to score a single goal.
Arsenal extended their unbeaten run through 14 matches and actually started winning games, including a tricky 2-1 win on the road to Sunderland and a 1-0 away win over Chelsea that ended up being one of the most boring matches of the season after Moisés Caicedo was sent off in the 38th minute. They eventually reached the top of the table — only to drop back down to second after a 2-1 loss to their old friend Unai Emery and Aston Villa.
After a 1-0 loss to Crystal Palace, a nascent, heretical-sounding idea begins to emerge among some former players and current television personalities, that the Glazer family should take back control of the club from Jim Ratcliffe.
Liverpool, meanwhile, have won four of their past five. In their match against Fulham, Harrison Reed scored what might be the goal of the season — a diving, swirling piledriver that was his first in nearly three years, with his first shot of the campaign — but it quickly fades from memory. After all, it was only a consolation goal in the dying moments of a match Liverpool were already winning, 2-0.
Through 20 matches, there is a three-way tie for first place, and everyone braces for one of the most exciting title races in a long time.
All of the recently promoted teams are hanging on for dear life: Sunderland are plummeting down the table, just four points clear of Leeds in 18th, while Burnley sit just one point clear of the relegation places in 17th.
Chelsea owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital clearly wanted to get rid of Enzo Maresca right around the Bournemouth game after the turn of the calendar year — but they couldn’t do it after a decisive 2-0 win, nor after a 1-1 draw on the road with Manchester City. But they finally cut ties with their manager after a confused 2-0 defeat away to Fulham.
Despite frequent claims of the independence of the two BlueCo owned clubs, they brought in Liam Rosenior, the Strasbourg manager, to be the new Chelsea manager.
Rosenior speaks like someone who has read all of the wrong self-help books and videos emerge of him encouraging his players to treat the soccer ball as if it were a holy vessel containing the sum total of human knowledge. He also claims that his job as a manager is to age men. Man-ager … get it? Everyone expects him to fail.
The conversation around Slot’s suitability for the job has faded into the background and instead a consensus emerges around Liverpool: this is a good team that’s not quite ready to challenge for a title.
At Man United, Amorim was replaced by Michael Carrick, who oversaw United victories against City and then Arsenal in his first two matches in charge. However, that’s followed by a 2-2 draw against Fulham and then a bare-minimum 1-0 win over Tottenham, who had a player sent off in the 38th minute, haven’t won a game since early December, and are now just five points clear of relegation.
Many people got swept up in the good vibes around Carrick’s first two matches, but with United in ninth, it’s clear that he’s nothing more than a caretaker.
Biggest beneficiaries: Burnley have eight more points; Liverpool and Bournemouth seven; Crystal Palace six
At the bottom of the table, Burnley and West Ham are tied on 28th points, with the former in 18th thanks to a superior goal differential. Tottenham, unthinkably, are in 17th, but they still have a three-point cushion thanks to a last-second 1-0 win at Anfield two weeks ago. Perhaps new manager Igor Tudor has figured something out? Leeds, too, are only three points clear of the bottom three; they haven’t scored a single goal over their last five matches.
Higher up, the addition of a fifth Champions League slot is doing wonders for the competitive texture of the league. As expected before the season, there is a clear top four: Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea are the only teams in the league with positive goal differentials in the double digits.
But after that? Well, there’s only a two-point gap between fifth and eighth, and a five-point gap between fifth and 11th. Andoni Iraola is the favorite for whatever next big job opens up — in England or elsewhere — as his Bournemouth are in fifth place with seven matches to go despite losing 75% of their backline over the summer and their star forward, Antoine Semenyo, to Manchester City in January.
Some even viewed their most recent match with Manchester United as a “loser leaves town” type of deal. Carrick’s United had risen up to fifth thanks to wins over fellow Champions League hopefuls Crystal Palace and Aston Villa. But Bournemouth’s win over United catapulted the Cherries up to fifth, and it led many to believe that if Iraola can beat Manchester United with Bournemouth, then, well, he should be managing Manchester United.
With Palace now in eighth — two back of Bournemouth, one back of Villa and United — Glasner is struggling to hold it all together. The club is still in the hunt despite team captain, Marc Guéhi, leaving for City in January.
After a recent loss to Leeds, the manager started to scream into the microphone some vague accusations of needing support and the team lacking depth until a Palace employee whispered in his ear and pointed to a piece of paper sitting on the dais in front of him. Although Palace are in eighth place, they still have a game in hand to the three teams ahead of them in the table.
Chelsea are in third, Liverpool in fourth, and both their seasons have unfolded in a way that has somehow prevented the media from ever really reaching for hysterics to describe either team.
Chelsea are a young team with a young manager, while Liverpool’s attack has been hampered by Isak breaking his leg earlier in the season against Tottenham and Mohamed Salah, who just announced he’d be leaving the club after the season, finally hitting the age cliff. Both teams will be in the Champions League next season, and both teams are expected to be much better next season.
At the top, City have 61 points through 30 games. They bullied the two upstart midtable clubs, Bournemouth and Palace, into letting go of their best players in the middle of the season. And if they win out, they will win the league.