Throwing it away: Which Premier League teams are best at retaining possession from throw-ins?
Throw-ins are in many respects football's forgotten set-piece, seen as a chance for players to catch their breath or supporters to momentarily relax and scroll through their phone.
Premier League matches tend to produce between 40 and 50 per game however, so getting the basics right is important. They also pose an interesting tactical challenge, because the team throwing the ball on are temporarily left with nine outfield players against 10. Arsene Wenger, now Fifa's chief of global football development, has suggested allowing players to kick the ball back on to address this imbalance.
Some members of football's punditocracy scoffed when Liverpool started working with specialist throw-in coach Thomas Gronnemark. In a low-scoring sport though, why wouldn't a team want to maximise every piece of possession and avoid coughing the ball up unnecessarily?
Data collectors Opta keep track of the percentage of each team's throw-ins that arrive at the correct colour shirt and there is quite a spread. Chelsea are the most accurate in the division with 94.1 per cent of throw-ins being received by a Chelsea player. Leeds United, Manchester City and Liverpool follow. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that those teams who prioritise possession over territory are more reluctant to sling the ball down the line.
West Brom are comfortably bottom of the pile, with just 70.8 per cent of throw-ins successfully received. This means close to one in three throw-ins are going straight back to the opposition. If there are 50 throw-ins in a game, West Brom would give the ball to their opponents around 15 times across the 90 minutes. Surely this should be avoidable?
It is not all a case of big clubs top and poor teams bottom though. Only West Brom, Fulham and Newcastle United have been more inaccurate than Jose Mourinho's Tottenham on 78.3 per cent. Arsenal have attracted ire for Hector Bellerin's foul throws, and they sit eighth.
We should acknowledge that this data does not give a complete picture of how teams use the ball once it is in play. If you watch Liverpool closely, you will notice a big emphasis on working a chance to switch play when they have a throw-in. Teams want to press their opponents against the touchline - "box them in lads!" - so there is space on their opposite flank if the ball can be transferred quickly.
It is those pieces of choreographed play that Gronnemark is tasked with designing, and we can expect a more inventive approach to throw-ins to be a feature of football's development in the next few years.
