Last year’s version saw the tremendously overpowered long throw tactic help teams soar to new heights. Putting the exploitative nature of this routine aside though, you could argue that 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.

So how do we achieve goals like the one above?

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 circle is pretty much the ideal delivery zone, where you want your throw-in to end up. This leaves the throw-in taker with three realistic passing options. Most of the times, the throw in goes towards the player lurking in the box. This player is one of the two players coming short to receive it, so make sure he can actually head the ball properly. With two other lurkers nearby, the chances of recycling possession and scoring even from a deflected or initially defended set piece increase exponentially. 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 a goal like I usually score them with this set piece routine. I hardly ever score a direct header, it’s usually recycling possession quickly and hitting the opposition before they get a chance to re-group and re-organise the defensive line or a header towards the second post for someone to run onto.

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 a decent defensive midfielder, Nordtveit also possesses a decent long throw, which was slowly honed and improved over the course of last season. 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.

The download

Now I know what you all came here for, which is the download of this very routine. So here, there you go.

DOWNLOAD

When you download it, just place it in the same folder as the other FM16 tactics and you should be good to import it no problem.

Guido

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