David Moyes will hire a set piece coach at Everton to help the club avoid relegation, he has confirmed.
However, the new Everton manager may not employ a dedicated set piece specialist. Instead it may be a first team coach who takes on set piece duty at the club if his managerial history is anything to go by.
Moyes will remember his struggles at Sunderland, when he saw the club relegated with a paltry 26 points. During the disastrous season he bemoaned the sides lack of set piece prowess. He said: “It’s been a massive frustration. The biggest thing for me is that we’ve actually not headed anything in the net, we’ve probably not been close.
“Ultimately, the ball needs to come into the box to score and then what you need is people who are going to head it, we’ve not had that.”
In his first press conference at Everton he specifically highlighted the need to score more goals and name-checked set pieces as an area to improve.
Hiring a set piece coach is not an instant guarantee of success. When Gary O’Neill at Wolves hired set piece specialist Jack Wilson in the summer the club went on to concede five goals from set pieces in their first seven Premier League games. He was quietly sacked just a few months into the job.
Elsewhere a dedicated set piece coach has been a success. Arsenal and Aston Villa in particular have seen huge strides in set piece competitiveness. Nicolas Jover at Arsenal has been particularly innovative, leading to a league-leading 10 set piece goals this year. Meanwhile Austin MacPhee at Villa has seen them thrive in dead ball situations – helped by former Everton midfielder Amadou Onana’s height.
Meanwhile, Sean Dyche’s insistence on relying on Ian Woan and Steve Stone to run all aspects of training did actually bear fruit. Everton were one of the more effective set piece sides last season. Most notably Everton’s win over Liverpool at Goodison Park was a master class in simple but effective set piece plays.
However, Everton’s set piece effectiveness dropped off drastically and it pointed more towards Sean Dyche’s inflexibility. The tactic of lumping every set piece to the back post towards Tarkowski was quickly found out but the coaching staff refused to innovate or change things as it became less and less effective.
Traditionally David Moyes has landed somewhere in the middle. Over the years he has proved to rotate staff regularly, adding fresh ideas to the team when needed. He has also shied away from a dedicated set piece coach. Instead he favours one of his more analytically-minded coaching taking on set piece responsibility so that set pieces are part of the overall team tactics and not siloed by one person.
In the 2022/23 season West Ham outperformed Everton on set pieces and were one of the Premier League’s most effective sides. Talented coach Paul Nevin was credited with leading set piece coaching. Part of Gareth Southgate’s England staff, Nevin has a good reputation in the game and was poached by Strasbourg in summer 2023 to become part of the City Group’s network.
He has since left, but unfortunately for Moyes was appointed as Stoke City’s assistant manager less than a week ago – a case of bad timing if Moyes was keen to work with Nevin again.
After Nevin left West Ham Moyes quickly asked Kevin Nolan to take over set pieces and the club’s success continued. Nolan had worked under Nevin and continued the work all while keeping his other coaching duties.
Nolan is now manager of Northampton Town so it means Moyes may have to look outside his existing network to find a set piece coach. The manager was clear that he wanted to stick to Billy McKinley, Alan Irvine and Leighton Baines as his core staff until reassessing in the summer but he did hint one more appointment for a set piece specialist could be on the way.
It could be internal. Moyes mentioned he left a team of 10-15 staff and on his return that has grown to 80. Kevin Thelwell has been expanding analytics staff and youth coaching and it may be that there is an internal candidate who can provide specific opposition and set piece data.
That could be Leighton Baines. A set piece expert as a player, he is known to be data driven and analytical in his work with the under 18s and would be well placed to advise on set piece tactics at the club.
At West Ham 34-year-old Harry Newman was tasked with analytics and opposition scouting. A London School of Economics graduate, he was a data-heavy coach tasked with eeking out the ‘fine margins’ in games. He left the club with Moyes and could be a candidate if there are no internal options available to Moyes.
It may be a separate external candidate. But the fact Moyes is talking about the areas that can be improved through training and data will be a breath of fresh air for the club as it enters a new – albeit familiar – era.