A quick thread on Chelsea's improved set-piece prowess, especially in an offensive sense.

I'll be looking at three goals to explain a routine that we have been using a lot this season.

Example 1 - Silva's goal against West Ham.

Silva "hides" behind Zouma, starting well away from goal when the corner routine begins. Zouma is the decoy for Silva and mainly serves to distract defenders here.

Zouma's movement is as important as Mount's assist or Silva's header in this case.

He moves towards the goal initially, attracting players with him. He suddenly changes directions and ensures Cresswell moves away from Silva's zone, opening up space for Silva.

You can see the same principle applied in Zouma's goal against Burnley too. In this case, Zouma is the player "hiding" and Havertz is the "decoy".

Havertz opens up space, Zouma attacks it.

Another example is Zouma's goal against Leeds. In this case, the "decoy" is Giroud who is incredible in the air in his own right too.

In such a scenario, it is very difficult to stop the corner routine because both the "decoy" and the player "hiding" are massive aerial threats.

As simple as this routine looks, there are a lot of other moving parts. The "hiding" player and the "decoy" are the most important parts of the routine but the team needs players to make quick runs towards the near post too.

The players running towards the near post create space for the decoy to attack. Seeing the decoy attack the goal means opponents will have to commit players towards stopping him.

This in turn creates space for the player who is actually designed to score - in this case, Silva.

In a hypothetical scenario, if opponents decided not to pay a lot of attention to the main decoy player or the near-post runners, we will need the corner taker to be smart.

A near-post corner followed by a flick-on to Werner or Tammy (in this case) could cause havoc in the box.