Scoring from corners

Having looked at how to defend corners in some depth, I’m going to try and highlight how to get the most from your corners, especially as good set-piece routines can be the difference between losing/drawing and drawing/winning. As I’m sure everyone knows there was a highly successful corner routine available for both FM05 and FM06. Effectively a “cheat” routine the method involved loading as many players as possible onto either the near or far post before playing the corner to a long-shot specialist, standing on the edge of the area, who would then shoot at goal. It was a simple system that could easily guarantee the side as many as thirty goals a season. During testing for FM07 it was mentioned that this flaw in the match engine existed and SI promptly closed the loophole upsetting cheats everywhere. So how do you score from corners in FM07? Here are the three strategies I use (I typically score about 25-30 goals each season from corners), but it’s important to remember that they may not be this successful for you, it’s largely dependant on your players and the attributes they possess. Hopefully some of the ideas may come be useful though.

Routine 1 – The near post corner.

The basis of this routine is the idea that a ball played to the near post offers at least two goal-scoring opportunities, the initial header and the possibility of a player taking advantage of a flick-on to score. In order for this to work it’s important that the corner is an in-swinger (i.e. you have a right-footer taking corners from the left and vice-versa) played to the near post, so make sure to set your corner-takers accordingly. Next set your player with the best all-round heading attributes (heading, jumping and strength) to stand on the near post – this will usually be either a central defender or a target-man style centre forward. Then find a player with good strength and a reasonable aggression attribute (too high will result in free-kicks; too low and he’ll allow himself to be pushed out of the way) to challenge the goalkeeper. This player is a very important part of the routine and you should choose carefully as without him the keeper will easily move to the near post and claim your crosses. Next up is the player on the far post who needs to have good heading, finishing, anticipation and ideally, strength attributes – this is the player that will be expected to make the most of any flick-ons, rebounds or confusion in the defence. Having given instructions to four players it’s time to decide how defensive you wish to be and set players to stay back. I generally find that three players are more than enough to handle the AI which only usually leaves one or two players forward while defending corners. Attributes you should look for here are a mixture of pace, marking, tackling and heading. Any player that has good ratings for two or more of those should be considered and you will probably find that it usually means your full-backs plus a midfielder or winger (be careful that it isn’t the player set to take corners). The rest of the players can be set to whichever instruction you prefer, though I tend to have most success with them set to a mixture of ‘Go forward’ and ‘Attack ball from deep’. To summarise, your player instructions for the near post corner routine should look something like this…

 

Routine 2 – The far post corner.

This second routine works in pretty much the same way as the first, the biggest differences being that the ball is played to the far post rather than the near and that the players standing on the posts and challenging the ‘keeper need to be reorganised a little. Take the player who was your near post player in the first routine and stand him at the far post where he will be expected to try and score, unlike the near post routine where he was expected to flick the ball on for others. The player who had previously stood at the far post should now be moved to challenge the goalkeeper and the player who had occupied that role should now take up a position at the near post. “Why not just move the player from the far post to the near post and leave the player challenging the goalkeeper where he is?” I hear you ask. Simply because, as the ball is now hopefully travelling towards the far post, it is advantageous to have a player with good heading, anticipation and strength skills challenging the keeper should the ball to the far post be a poor one that won’t reach. All your other players can remain untouched meaning that your instructions will look something like this…

 

Routine 3 – Edge of the box.

Remember how I said that SI had stopped the edge of the box routine working? Well, I lied. Kind of. There’s no doubt that the success rate of the routine has been lowered and that it’s effectiveness is now no greater than any other corner routine; but with the right preparation it is still possible to score this way. First of all I should clear up the idea that SI have killed the routine because in actual fact they haven’t, what they have done is ensured that the match engine correctly identifies the fact that it’s impossible for 18 players to occupy the near/far post area (or any other area for that matter) at the same time and also that the AI will no longer stand idly by, taking no action whatsoever, while you play corner after corner to a man standing on the edge of the area. In short, they’ve made the game more realistic and removed the blatant cheating option. However, if you still want to use this kind of routine (and it’s quite spectacular and rewarding when it does work) then you need to set your player with the best long shot attribute to lurk on the edge of the area (if you have two with similar ratings go with the one who has the better anticipation and creativity attributes). Set your corner delivery as ‘Penalty area’ and ensure that the kicks are taken as out-swingers (i.e. right-footed players taking them from the right and left-footed from the left). Next we need to make sure that the penalty area is as free of obstruction as possible, if there is a mass of bodies between your shooter and the goal he’s much less likely to score. So, set two players to offer the short option to your kick-taker (don’t worry, he should ignore them) which should also drag a defender or two over to the side of the area. Then put two men each on the near and far post, again these are likely to be marked by defenders. Your remaining players should be told to stay back as with the other two routines, meaning you should have instructions like these…

One thing to be wary of when using this routine is, as mentioned earlier, that the AI will no longer allow you to repeatedly use this routine. You might get away with using it twice in some matches, whereas in others you won’t be able to use it at all before the AI manager chooses to mark the lurker. In that event I’d suggest switching to the near or far post routine which, due to them being much more realistic, I actually prefer to use anyway.