Set pieces are the last honest edge left in football

Dead-ball routines are the only phase where preparation reliably beats talent, which is why the cheapest coaching hire is a specialist.

There is a phase of football where the ball is stationary, the clock is stopped, both teams know exactly where everybody will start, and one side has spent all week rehearsing what happens next. It produces a large share of goals in most competitions, and until recently a lot of clubs handed it to whichever assistant had time on Thursday.

The reason it is exploitable is that it is the only part of the game with no improvisation on the delivery. Open play is chaotic, and the plan degrades within seconds of contact with an opponent. A corner is a set position. The delivery can be practised until it lands in the same square metre, the runs can be timed against that delivery, and the defensive setup you are attacking was visible on video from every match they have played this season.

Zonal versus man marking is where the public argument lives and it is mostly noise. The interesting question is not which system but what the system is trying to protect, because every arrangement gives something away. Zonal concedes the free run into a gap between zones. Man marking concedes blocks and screens. Good attacking sides do not beat one or the other, they identify which concession they have been offered and rehearse the routine that takes it.

The economics are what make this a genuine market inefficiency, if a shrinking one. A specialist coach costs a fraction of a squad player. A handful of extra goals for and against across a season is worth several points, and several points is worth an enormous amount of money at either end of a table. Almost no other intervention available to a club has that ratio.

I would go further and argue that the throw-in deserves the same treatment and gets nothing like it. It is the most common restart in the game and most teams treat it as a way of getting the ball back into play rather than as a possession they have been handed.

The edge is closing as more clubs hire for it. That is how edges work.

Right now, though, there is still a phase of football where being organised beats being better, and I do not know why anyone would leave it lying there.