Premier League Stats Review: Gameweek 5 Set Piece and Penalty Takers

This article is part of our Premier League Stats Review series.

Remember all the way back to last week when Ross Barkley had a monopoly of set pieces for Aston Villa and we thought maybe that might continue? That was funny.

Villa kept their place atop the table by beating Leicester City 1-0 for their fourth consecutive victory, but Barkley didn't take a single set piece, as John McGinn took five of six corners (crossing all of them; thank you, John) and Jack Grealish and Bertrand Traore (as a sub) each took one. Grealish also added one free-kick cross, while Matt Targett took a shot from a dead ball, which he failed to put on target. McGinn's five corners were more than his total free kicks coming into the weekend, and he still trails Conor Hourihane for the team lead even though the latter hasn't played the past two games.

We ended up with 12 players who took some kind of free kick after not doing so in any of the first four games, including half who played their first Premier League minutes of the season:

Hakim Ziyech sticks out because there were plenty of expectations that he would take set pieces when he was fit, and there we saw him take two after coming off the bench in his first match for Chelsea. His inclusion hurt Ben Chilwell's opportunities a bit, but it seems like the two could split in future matches when they both start.

We also saw Phil Foden join the Manchester City free-kick party, which also re-invited Ilkay Gundogan in the absence of the injured Kevin De Bruyne. The one thing we know is that De Bruyne should take most set pieces when he's on, but it's a pretty good guess who will take them when he's not, with Foden and Gundogan also sharing with Mahrez, who is the most likely to take even when De Bruyne starts.

The re-introduction of Gareth Bale is really interesting because if he takes over on set pieces when he starts then that leads to a direct reduction for Son Heung-Min, who has been quite good on them. It'll be a mess for DFS players, though the two obviously have plenty of open-play value. We also saw Sergio Reguilon added to the mix, so maybe Tottenham is going to throw us for a loop on a game-by-game basis.

Oh, and let's not forget about Juan Mata making his season debut and taking away some set pieces from Bruno Fernandes, who also had to watch Luke Shaw (!!!) grab a few. My only thought with Shaw is that the team is getting ready for when Alex Telles can take those over and they need to work on what happens when their left-back is on corners. Otherwise, Shaw doing anything over Fernandes seems like a fire-able offense.

Here's what we saw in Gameweek 5, with a reminder that you can see a full gameweek-by-gameweek breakdowns of each team on our Team Trends pages, which is available for all subscribers. If you are not a subscriber and would like to try us out, please click here for 10 free days to the site, no credit card required.

There was also some trouble with penalties this week, as half of the four attempts were unsuccessful, including Fernandes' first miss of this Premier League career, which theoretically opens the door for Marcus Rashford to step up. Elsewhere, we saw Aleksandar Mitrovic hit the woodwork on his attempt, while Wilfried Zaha connected on his and Billy Sharp did the same for Sheffield United after coming on as a substitute.