It’s hardly a new tactic or a new approach to matters. In fact, you could say the long throw has gained acceptance as part of a robust approach to the game, pioneered by someone like Rory Delap upto the point where many Premier League clubs now use it as a legitimate weapon. For a throw-in anywhere in line with the penalty area, a player will be designated to hurl the ball into the box in the mode of a surrogate corner kick.

So if that works in real life, there should be a way to make it work in FM as well. The good news is, there is a way to make it work in FM and it’s pretty easy as well. You do need a few things to make throw-ins work like this, but when you get it all right, you end up with moments like these in FM.

In order to end up with moments like these, you need a mere two things:

• The right settings;
• The right delivery system.

 The right settings

I can be quite brief about this section. The default throw-in settings, combined with the right delivery are proving to be quite lethal. You could probably improve further upon the system, but it’s a good system as is. Just for reference, let me show you the settings I am working with.

These are pretty much the default settings for throw-ins for the formation I am playing. As I said before, there is probably room for improvement, but these settings work. In-game, they result in situations like these.

The red square is pretty much the ideal delivery zone, where you want your throw-in to end up. This leaves the throw-in taker with two realistic passing options, either one of the two lurkers, who can then run into the box, pass it or shoot, or one of the players already in the box. Naturally, you need to set the distribution for throw-ins to long in order to achieve this.

When executed correctly, it should look like this.

In the above video, you can see three goals in a single game eminating from a throw-in. You can see that it’s basically an extra corner. With the AI’s throw-in defence looking sub-par, it’s a great way to bag a few extra goals.

The right delivery system

The delivery system is the somewhat ignominious name for the player fulfilling the Delap role, our long range throw-in cannon. Let me introduce you to my very own throw-in cannon first.

Besides being an absolutely lethal defender, Rui Cruz also possesses a decent long throw, which was slowly developed over the past two seasons. You can also see the amount of assists he racked up with this, which is not even counting the amount of secondary assists, where he throws it to a lurker, who then passes it for a goal. His assist-tally is solely down to throw-ins, and it’s a decent return. Anyway, the long throws attribute is ofcourse very important here.

When a player doesn’t possess a high attribute for long throws, you can ofcourse improve this by having a player specifically train for this attribute. You can raise the value of the attribute by 3 to 4 points in a seasons time, so it could be an attribute well worth developing. This is the training regime for one of my U19 players, whom I want to train to be a throw-in cannon as well.

An aspect I don’t want to underrate is the PPM Possesses Long Flat Throw. As you can see in the training regime above, I have asked my coaches to develop this PPM as well, as I do feel it’s of added value and absolutely increases the chance of you scoring from a long throw. If the ball isn’t delivered quickly, defenders will have a chance to anticipate on the flight of the ball and re-position themselves accordingly.

Guido

Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.