In the early hours of Thursday morning's English Premier League match, a battle known as the "fairy-demon duel" took place at the home of Manchester United. In this fierce battle, Arsenal, under the tight blockade of Manchester United, succeeded in breaking the game with corner kicks. With two consecutive headers from "The Quill", Arsenal extended Bordeaux's four-game winning streak with a 2-0 victory, and capped Ruben Emmeren's first loss since taking charge of Manchester United. Since last season, Arsenal's 22 corner kicks have added to the Premier League's myriad of excitement.
Although Arsenal were in control of the game, they created a number of threats against United's heavy defence. Dylan Rice sent in a powerful corner on 54 minutes which was echoed by Zulian Timba's header. By the 73rd minute, Bukayo Shaka took a corner on the right and Thomas Buddy's long-range effort found the exact center of the field where William Shaliba finished in Bordeaux's drag-flick.
However, there were mistakes in United's positional defense, and unfortunately, their counter-attacks were almost ineffective, and the negligence of corner defense frequently became the hidden danger of losing the game. The corner ratio for the whole match was 0-13, with Bordeaux's dragons winding up. According to the official data of the Premier League, Arsenal has 22 successful corner kick attacks since last season, 7 goals more than the second-place team, of which 10 goals are the opening of the first, its versatile corner kick tactics are impressive.
Emmeren tasted defeat in his fourth game at Manchester United. After the match, he said, "I did a good job controlling Arsenal, the only difference was the set pieces. The opposition has a lot of tall players like Martinelli and Shaka. When you see them, you realize that if you can pass the ball or get a corner, you have a chance to score. The first goal changed the game. I tried hard, but the set-piece was the difference between winning and losing."
