Bristol City appoint King as first Set Piece Coach

The appointment comes four months after Michael Skubala was named Manager of the Championship club. Skubala’s previous side, Lincoln City, were renowned as the Football League’s set piece specialists.

The Imps scored 30 set-piece goals in 2024/25, more than any other EFL side, with more than half of their league goals coming from dead-ball situations. Last season, as they won the League One title, 27 of their 77 league goals came from set pieces, again the most in League One.

Skubala said: “Ben is someone that we’ve tracked for some time. We knew that we wanted to add another staff member to the group. We feel it’s a really important part of how we want to be, how we want to play. We wanted to shine a lot of light on set pieces. It’s not just corners and free-kicks; it’s all the different areas of the dead-ball situations.

“Ben’s going to come in and lead that, in terms of the analysis but also the delivery of that, in time. Pat and Luke have been doing that to an exceptional standard so far, so it’s a high bar to come to.

“It’s just about making sure that we continue to develop the staff, as well as the playing group. It’s not just for now. It’s for the next three years, where we want to be and where we want to get to. We have the opportunity to bring Ben in, who is a great coach and a great set-piece deliverer, that we can add to the group. It’s only going to add to the players.”

King added: “I am really pleased to be here and am looking forward to working with this talented group of players and staff. The Championship is extremely competitive and we are all looking forward to the rest of the season.”

King’s background is in coaching rather than analysis. He was Under-18s coach at Walsall and Head of Academy Coaching at Accrington Stanley before Danny Rohl took him to Hillsborough in 2024 as Set Piece Analyst. Rohl, now at RB Salzburg, had made set pieces a priority on his arrival at Wednesday.

At Lincoln, Skubala worked with Scott Fry, who moved from Goalkeeper Coach to Set Piece Coach in the summer of 2024 and oversaw the 30-goal season before leaving for Rangers in November 2025. Fry became Birmingham City’s first Set Piece Coach in July. 

Lincoln had used an AI tool that analysed thousands of set pieces from around the world to inform training and matchday planning.

“It’s a tool we’re using to try and give us an edge in the league,” Skubala told TGG in January 2025. “League One is a league that is very direct and very aerially dominant. So we try and find an edge wherever we can, but we have to bring it in-house and use it to make sure that it’s not just a piece of paper and the edge becomes the alignment between the resource and how we deliver that on the pitch.”

Skubala’s appointment in May was the first major decision of Sporting Director James Ellis, who had joined from Arsenal weeks earlier with a brief from Chief Executive Charlie Boss to bring “Premier League standards” to the football department. Bristol City finished 12th last season under Gerhard Struber and then Roy Hodgson, scoring 59 and conceding 59, and are in the top half of the Championship this season.