Dorset Seagull
Once Dolphin, Now Seagull
You're right. Few goals are scored from corners so it makes sense to play it short. According to The Numbers Game:
The data show that, on average, about 20.5% of all corners (that's 1 in 5) led to a shot by the team that took the corner within three touches of the ball. . . Of the corners that actually led to shots within three touches, what were the odds that the ball crossed the line? . . . On average, about 11% or 1 in 9 shots created from corners produce goals. Incidentally, that's also right around the average ratio for goals to all shots taken in soccer matches (the Reep ratio). . . The yield from corners ranges from 0 to .07. On average, the data show that a corner is good for (drumroll ....) 0.022 goals. This means that the average EPL team scores 1 goal from a corner about every 10 games. And this helps to explain the lack of a correlation between the number of corners and goal scoring. The infrequency of the goals from corners combined with a lack of dispersion between teams in corners per game lead conspire to make corners mostly, well, useless when it comes to scoring goals.
Thanks that’s exactly where I saw it as I still have the book on my IPad. Excellent read for the number crunchers amongst us!