Oliver Hopkins for Opta Analyst:

Arsenal are generating just 0.22 xG per game from corners, at an average of 0.047 xG per corner. They’ve fallen from the second-most dangerous team per corner to the ninth.

A drop from 0.064 to 0.047 might not sound particularly dramatic, but it represents a 26.6% reduction in the average quality of chances they’re generating per corner.

And it’s not just the quality of chances that has declined. Arsenal are also generating fewer shots from corners, down from 2.8 per game last season, the second-highest figure in the league, to 2.1 this season, the ninth highest.

[…] With Timber out for much of this season, the distribution of those first contacts is different.

Kai Havertz has made more first contacts from attacking corners than any other Arsenal player (four). Gabriel, so often zoomed in on by TV cameras before any corner, has made just one – he is clearly not getting as much joy this campaign.

Ezri Konsa isn’t known for his threat from corners – he’s scored just two headers in his Premier League career, and since his debut in the competition, 238 defenders have scored more headed goals than he has. He did score from a corner for England in the third-place play-off at this summer’s World Cup, but that wasn’t exactly typical of him.

And Ben White, who has replaced Timber, has not got his head to a single corner – although in fairness, he often plays more of a blocking/disrupting role.

The article has more detail than what I quoted, but to highlight this portion; this is why I don’t like teams that quote-on-quote, rely on corners.

In my opinion, there are more points of failure for corners compared to open play. If it were up to me, all corners would be taken short. I find “normal crosses” to be harder to defend compared to corner kicks because there is more variance on the trajectory, the angle, the way the attackers go for the ball, the movement of the defense when the ball is crossed in normally.

A corner kick is the most reproducible thing in football other than a short pass. If you have the players to pinpoint the same cross into the same exact area, and the attackers to head the cross, a corner kick is the most dangerous and broken play in football by a wide margin.

When you are missing just one element of that attack for the corner kick, it all falls apart. If no one can head the ball, you can’t score. If the cross is consistently inaccurate, you can’t score. And these are harder things to do than to work the ball into the box because they are unnatural for a footballer.

Now, Arsenal have recruited in a way were they have a lot of depth specifically made for corners but still even they seem to be struggling to balance that house of cards.