Pep Guardiola has expressed his concern over the Premier League’s dramatic increase in goals from set-pieces, stating the modern game is starting to feel like the tough, physical challenges of facing Tony Pulis’s Stoke City side.The statistics back him up: an unprecedented 19% of all league goals now come from corners, a jump of almost five percent from past seasons.
Guardiola suggested that teams are consciously creating chaos, saying, “people use every throw-in like a corner and put 10 players there in the box.”He recalled the effectiveness of past set-piece masters like Sean Dyche and Sam Allardyce, and specifically mentioned the struggles against Brentford, where every action into the box was a danger.
He concluded that while this intense focus on set-pieces isn’t new—referencing the iconic long throws of the old Stoke team—it is now becoming the norm rather than the “exception.”