When Chelsea poached Aston Villa’s set-piece coach Austin MacPhee this summer, the move meant more than a new addition to the dugout.
Chelsea invested in a specialised part of modern football.
MacPhee arrived with a strong record at Aston Villa.
He helped the club develop into one of the Premier League’s most effective set-piece teams.
Meanwhile, Chelsea moved Bernardo Cueva into a technical analyst role.
More Premier League clubs now employ specialist set-piece coaches.
They no longer treat dead-ball work as a quick five-minute drill.
The statistics help explain the trend.
Set pieces produced 27.5% of Premier League goals during the 2025/26 season.
Reports also suggested that 15 of the division’s 20 clubs employed specialist set-piece coaches.
Those numbers show why clubs now take the area seriously.
However, an important question remains.
What do set-piece coaches actually change on the training ground?
More importantly, can that work create a measurable advantage on matchday?
The role of a set-piece coach
A set-piece coach starts working before the ball reaches the penalty area.
First, the coach studies how an opponent defends dead-ball situations.
Then, the staff identify spaces that defenders may leave open.
The team can then build routines around those weaknesses.
For example, one player may attack the near post for a flick-on.
Another player may block a defender and create space at the back post.
The team can also target a specific delivery area.
Players then know exactly where they need to move.
Each player receives a clear role within the routine.
However, set-piece coaches do more than create goals.
They also help teams defend dead-ball situations.
Coaches can assign marking duties and protect dangerous areas.
They can also prepare players for second balls after the first contact.
The role can even continue during matches.
A set-piece coach may communicate quick changes from the touchline.
If an opponent reads a routine, the staff can change the approach.
That allows the team to adapt without waiting for half-time.
Therefore, the job goes beyond designing clever routines.
It involves building a system that can respond to opponents.
Why Premier League clubs are increasingly hiring set-piece coaches
The simplest reason comes down to how often dead-ball situations arise during a game.
Every Premier League match contains multiple corners, free-kicks and throw-ins, creating repeated situations that can be prepared for and improved over a season.
There is also another attraction.
Unlike many situations in open play, set pieces can be analysed and rehearsed repeatedly on the training ground before they are used in matches.
Set-piece coaches can also pinpoint a defensive weakness on video, and map out a well-drilled routine in training until the lads know exactly where they need to position themselves once those opportunities arise.
These rewards are massive at both ends of a pitch.
A well-designed routine can create a close-range goalscoring chance, while a good defensive organisation can reduce the chances of the opposition creating the same opportunities.
This is what makes the set-piece coaching role different.
It can improve a team’s attacking output without requiring the manager to change his style of play.
With set pieces accounting for 27.5% of Premier League goals in the 2025/26 season, the potential return is difficult for clubs to ignore.
Do set-piece coaches make a difference?
Arsenal are probably the clearest example of how set-piece coaching can significantly improve a team’s dead-ball output.
Before Nicolas Jover’s appointment, the North London side scored just six set-piece goals during the 2020/21 campaign.
That return jumped to 16 in his first year, followed by 15 and 20 goals in the next two seasons, before the Gunners recorded 25 set-piece goals in the 2025/26 season.
That is a massive turnaround, and it becomes harder to explain it as a coincidence when improvement continues season after season.
But the numbers can’t prove that Jover alone caused it.
Better deliveries, different personnel, recruitment, and Arsenal’s wider development all played a part.
At the end of the day, a set-piece coach can draw perfect routines, but the players still have to deliver on the pitch.
Jover’s track record provides stronger evidence that a dead-ball specialist can contribute to a team’s tactical advantage, but simply hiring a set-piece coach doesn’t automatically produce more goals or fewer set-piece goals conceded.
The challenge of maintaining a set-piece advantage
The catch with finding a clever tactical shortcut is that the rest of the league will eventually catch on and copy you.
Once rivals have enough footage of those routines, the element of surprise starts to disappear, and familiar runs become easier to read.
That leaves set-piece coaches with a different challenge of staying unpredictable.
They have to change the starting positions, rotate the runners and blockers, move the delivery zone and hide what the routine is trying to create.
Arsenal’s experience under Nicolas Jover shows how this works in practice.
Winning this battle doesn’t mean repeating the same routine until it stops working.
It means repeatedly finding new ways to exploit the weaknesses opponents still leave open.
That constant reinvention may be the real value of having a set-piece coach in the team.
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