Long throw-in returns as a tactical weapon across the Premier League
Clubs and coaches are increasingly training and deploying long throws after data and specialist coaches showed measurable gains
The long throw-in is enjoying a resurgence in English football as teams increasingly treat it as a deliberate attacking weapon rather than a stopgap set-piece.
Data from Opta and recent club practice show long throws — defined as throws of at least 20 metres that reach the opposition penalty area — are more common and more productive than in past seasons. On the opening weekend of the current Premier League campaign, 11 of the 20 teams sent a long throw into the opposition box at least once, up from four teams in the same period last season.
Specialist coaching, measurement and academic study have helped push the trend. Thomas Gronnemark, the Danish throw-in coach who joined Liverpool in 2018 and worked with the club until 2023, is often cited as a turning point. Gronnemark, who holds the world record for the longest throw-in at 51.33 metres, said Liverpool’s possession rates from throw-ins rose from 45.4 percent to 68.4 percent under his tutelage, moving the side from 18th to first in the league on that metric.
Clubs have taken notice. Opta data show long throws into the penalty area rose from an average of 0.9 per game in 2020-21 to 1.5 per game in 2024-25. The proportion of long throws leading to goals has also increased, from 0.03 percent to 0.38 percent over that span.
Brentford has been among the most effective practitioners. The club scored five goals from throw-ins last season, created 48 chances from throws and accrued an expected-goals (xG) total of 7.2 from those situations. Gronnemark now works with Brentford, and the club’s former manager Thomas Frank has carried that emphasis with him to Tottenham Hotspur since his summer move; Spurs made six long throws into the opposition penalty area last season and had made eight already in the current term.
The tactical adoption has not been confined to club football. England’s head coach Thomas Tuchel — who described the long throw-in as “back” — and his staff have flagged the set-piece as a potential tool ahead of major tournaments. Tuchel’s assistant Anthony Barry, whose university dissertation analysed every Premier League throw-in from the 2018-19 season, has provided an academic underpinning to the practice. Barry watched more than 60 hours of footage and analysed 16,380 throw-ins, concluding that throwing the ball laterally or backwards increases success rates compared with forward throws, and that higher-ranked teams used that strategy more frequently.
Gronnemark said throw-in work is well suited to short, intensive training camps before tournaments. “If Tuchel said ‘we want to improve the long throwing’, that would be really easy for me to improve,” Gronnemark said. “It would be great if England could do some long throwing — not all the time, but once in a while. They should only do it if it’s a really dangerous weapon.”
The long throw has historical precedent in England. Between 2008 and 2012, Rory Delap’s throws for Stoke City became infamous for creating crowded, chaotic penalty-area situations and prompting novel defensive responses. Managers and pundits at the time debated whether Delap’s throws were in the spirit of football; more recently, coaches have framed long throws as one of several technical tools to be honed alongside corners, free kicks and goalkeeper distributions.
The rising prevalence of specialist coaches and the accumulating data underpin a strategic shift: clubs are no longer treating throw-ins as low-probability restarts but as rehearsed set plays that can produce chances and goals. Whether long throws will continue to grow in frequency and influence depends on coaching priorities, player personnel and the balance clubs strike between possession-based approaches and more direct set-piece strategies.
For now, managers and analysts say the long throw represents a simple, trainable way to add variety to attacking options. As clubs and national teams refine delivery, movement and defensive countermeasures, the throw-in has moved from a marginal tactic to an accepted element of modern match preparation.