On the opening weekend of the new Premier League season, 11 of 20 teams launched at least one long throw into the opposition box. It is part of a wider trend that stretches back into last season.
It’s a bit early in the season to start making sweeping statements about the future direction of football tactics. (Yes, we know we’re the website that also runs a weekly feature titled ‘Knee-Jerk Reactions’).
But there was something very noticeable about the opening weekend of the 2025-26 Premier League season.
Long throw-ins featured heavily.
It’s not like we’re heading back for the days of long-ball football, target men up top and crosses being the main – or only – route to goal.
We’re not even going back to the days of Sam Allardyce’s Bolton and Tony Pulis’ Stoke City, who built so much of their success around set-pieces and long throws. We all remember that infamous time Hull City’s goalkeeper Boaz Myhill kicked the ball out for a corner when facing Stoke to avoid conceding a throw-in and facing a Rory Delap rocket.
His aura. The fear. t.co/G4kLJX18yi pic.twitter.com/nuOyD1We65
— (@stokaljona) May 28, 2023For years, long throws were looked down on as the work of the less capable. They were seen as something that teams who could not get the ball close to goal ‘the right way’ would resort to because they weren’t good enough to do any better.
“You cannot say it is football anymore,” former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger said in 2010 of Stoke’s tactics. “It is more rugby on the goalkeepers than football.”
Pulis’ Stoke enjoyed great success, but they eventually sank without a trace, and his tactics disappeared with him. For years, in the afterglow of the success of Spain and Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, idealism was the name of the game. Everyone strived to play perfect football, just like the best teams in the world.
But there does appear to be an increasing view now that an element of pragmatism is needed, even right at the top of the game. Mikel Arteta, who played in the Premier League in the Pulis era, has built a technical and possession-dominant Arsenal team, but they are also exceptional at set-pieces. Long throws are a part of their attacking weaponry, and they have been for a few years.
It’s quite possible Arteta was influenced by Brentford, who beat Arsenal in their first ever Premier League game in August 2021, with Christian Nørgaard, now of Arsenal, scoring their second goal in a 2-0 win from a long throw.
Then-Brentford manager Thomas Frank has become one of the most respected coaches in the Premier League, and this summer earned a move to Tottenham, replacing one of the most idealistic managers ever seen in this country, Ange Postecoglou. He isn’t seen as a dinosaur who is stuck in the past, but rather a pragmatist who knows what it takes to win.
There was always going to be a major shift in Tottenham’s approach under the Dane, but the evidence of this weekend – as well as the UEFA Super Cup against PSG last week – suggests a bigger shift than many would have expected.
Against Burnley on Saturday, Spurs sent their centre-backs forward to attack a long throw from Lucas Bergvall on three occasions. This came just days after they had done so five times for Kevin Danso’s throw-ins against PSG.
Before those games, Spurs fans had no idea Bergvall or Danso could launch the ball into the box like that. In 38 Premier League games in 2024-25, they took only six long throws into the opposition’s box, compared to eight in their first two competitive games of this season.
Frank taking this football to Tottenham is part of a wider trend. Over the opening weekend of the Premier League this season, 11 out of 20 teams loaded the box and sent a long throw into the opposition’s penalty area on at least one occasion. Twelve months earlier, on the opening weekend of the 2024-25 season, just four teams did so.
And the list of teams who took long throws last weekend includes many of the most successful, exciting, technical and lauded teams in the league, such as Liverpool, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brighton and Crystal Palace.
This is no longer a tactic reserved for the worst teams. Everyone is at it, perhaps influenced themselves by Frank and Arteta.
To allow us to compare seasons in the Premier League, we need a consistent definition for what makes a long throw. So, for the purposes of this discussion, we’ve gone with throw-ins of at least 20 metres in length (before the next touch of the ball) that also ended in the opposition penalty area.
This isn’t quite a perfect definition because we only really want instances of teams setting up for a set-piece, chucking their big men forward and launching the ball towards them. For example, our definition doesn’t exclude quickly taken throw-ins that are hurled down the line into space for an attacker to chase, only for the goalkeeper or a defender to get across and intercept just inside the box. It also doesn’t include throws launched into the box that travel less than 20m.
However, it does give us a good indication of how often teams are using long throws as an attacking weapon, so it’ll do.
Last weekend, there were 32 throw-ins that met those criteria, an average of 3.2 per game, which is significantly higher than in any other Premier League season on record (since 2015-16).
Of course, we’re only one game into 2025-26, so we can’t assume that we’ll see this many in every game over the course of the whole campaign.
But it does continue a trend in recent years of the number of long throws increasing. From a low of 0.9 per game in 2020-21, numbers have increased season on season ever since, up to 1.5 in 2024-25. We probably won’t see 3.2 per game all season in 2025-26, but we may well see more than last term.
The main reason last weekend’s numbers look like a sign of things to come, however, is one single stat from the Premier League last season: 19 goals were scored from throw-in situations. That’s at least 10 more than any other season in the last five years, and at least six more than any other campaign in the last decade.
Teams have greater resources now, and are planning their set-pieces meticulously. That now extends to throw-ins, too.
Last term, Brentford scored five goals from throw-ins, but it could have been more; they generated 48 chances worth 7.2 xG. Thirteen other teams scored at least one goal from a throw-in in and eight teams had at least 10 shots.
Other teams are now recognising that there is value in launching the ball into the box from a throw-in. As Rory Delap and Stoke showed all those years ago, a well-taken throw with a thought-through game plan around it can be hugely effective. If so many teams are scoring goals with throw-ins now, then, others are realising, they should at least try.
We are yet to see a goal following a throw-in in 2025-26, but last weekend there were eight shots – a rate of 0.8 per game, which is higher than any other season in the past decade. Clearly, teams have been working on making the most of throw-ins deep in opposition territory.
The overall number of throw-ins has dropped significantly over the last 10 years. In 2015-16 in the Premier League, there were 17,596 throw-ins; in 2024-25, there were 12,502. That’s a drop of almost a third. Players and teams are much, much better at keeping the ball on the pitch these days.
So, when the ball does go out in an attacking position, it is more of an opportunity than it was previously. This is a chance to put the opposition under pressure in a way they just aren’t used to. Given the success some teams are having, it makes sense to try and make the most of these positions, even if it means the football isn’t as pretty as someone like Arsène Wenger would like.
The fact is that if your team scores, you don’t care how the ball goes into the net. And teams are so technically proficient these days that we aren’t going to see a team like Pulis’ Stoke rising up the Premier League. Throw-ins are just a supplementary form of attack now, and a legitimate one, too.
It’s not quite a return to the 2000s, but long throw-ins are very much back.
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