Should Toffees hire a set-piece coach?
Former Manchester United assistant manager Rene Meulensteen spoke about set pieces on BBC Radio Merseyside's Total Sport show: "Set pieces can be a beautiful art form, it can be. I don't think it's ugly football at all.
"It's an integral part of the game and it's very clear that teams that put a lot of effort in it, in terms of the defensive set-up and defending set pieces, they won't concede a lot of goals and the teams that spend a lot of time taking corners and wide free kicks, especially if you've got a specialist, can pay huge dividends. That shows with Arsenal and Everton this season."
Everton boss Sean Dyche has said he doesn't need to to follow the model at other clubs, where specialist set-piece coaches have been recruited.
Meulensteen said the use of such specialists is "part of evolution".
"If you go back 15 years ago or 20 years ago no one's heard of a performance coach or strength and conditioning coach, that has all come in," Meulensteen added.
"Now it's a specific set piece coach and I think with the way that football is going, it's such a specific specialist approach, you're probably going to see more teams working with defensive coaches or teams that work with more assistant coaches that focus more on possession and forward play and a set piece coach fits in to that as well because it does take a lot of preparation. You have to look at all the details, it is making sure that everybody knows their job and then does their job.
"Especially with the attacking set pieces, you can't rely on the same sort of set pieces all the time because then you become predictable, so you need to sort of refresh and you have also players that fall away because of injury or suspension so I think it's essential.
"It frees up a lot of time for the head coach and the manager because if he can trust the set-piece coach to do a really good job, he doesn't have to really be involved, which is a good thing."
