This post is not a typical piece of “hey, let’s a look at how I scored a lot of goals thanks to this routine”. The truth is that I didn’t score a lot of goals with this long throw-in routine during my second season in Poland with Warta Poznan. I made a short video with four examples but I think I scored three or four more.

Personally, I enjoyed thinking about what’s wrong with the routine and the set-piece creator (in my eyes of course) much more rather than sharing “THE BEST THROW-IN LONG ROUTINE OF ALL!!!”. Or insert corner/free-kick routine. I know the reason why all the videos have this type of title and headline (hitz everywhere) but I’m sure we are far away from the moment when there will be someone who will create something “the best”.

The biggest issue of the long throw-in routine

It’s nothing new and it’s one of the most common things that put me off using the long throw-in routine, even in the previous editions. It’s nice you can have up to three different set-piece routines created/loaded, but the fact you can’t affect which routine will be used and mainly where it will be used. That leads to the situations when your throw-in taker decides to use the long routine on his own half of the pitch and the rest of the players from the original set-up are in absolutely different positions/places.

Most of these routines end with the misplaced throw or the taker sends the ball with the long throw to the lone striker who is defended by two or more players and he can do nothing against them.

I’m not a statistical expert and I’m not playing the game to study every stat in the game but for me, the throw-in example in the short clip above is a misplaced pass. Or lost possession. And as you can see, the game recognises too when you add the “Lost Possession” column to the view in the Analytical Data/Players/Passes of a specific match. Mateusz Bakowicz, my main WBR in the match against Legia, took has 11x misplaced passes and three of them were long throws to nowhere (3 from 8 throws in total during the match!). Two of these bad throws were in 87th and 93rd minutes.

We didn’t concede straight after that throw in the 93rd minute but yes, we conceded the fourth goal in the fourth minute of the stoppage time, just tens seconds later. So it all can lead to it.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT?

I don’t know if it’s even possible but the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it would be great for throw-in routines if we would be able to create routines for defensive and attacking half of the pitch. Why? Because of what I mentioned slightly above. We are creating the routine with the view of attacking the opponent’s goal. That’s why we place our players to attacking roles like Attack Near/Far Post, Lurk At Near Post etc.

But when the same routine is used on your own half of the pitch (= in a different positioning and shape because you don’t attack, you just want to keep the ball, you can’t cross to the near post from around your own corner kick flag), it’s absolute chaos and most of these situations are useless. Mostly in comparison with the short throw-in routine as that’s a routine during which you have a more compact shape on both halves of the pitch.

“This will instruct throw-in takers to generally seek to launch the ball long into the opposition’s defensive third of the pitch in a bid to trasition into attack as quickly as possible.”

I think I understand the above official description of the long throw-in correctly. But I don’t understand how my players can put the ball to the opposition’s defensive third of the pitch from their defensive corner flag…

DECISION ATTRIBUTE

If I will be so romantic and a little bit naive, I will trust the fact that the decision attribute can affect the thinking of my own players and they are so clever/stupid that they will decide what they and their teammates need the most in a specific situation.

Example of how I would like to see it works: my wing-back is set as a throw-in taker. For all created/loaded routines. He will use his decisions attribute and he will be able to decide where and when to use long, short or quick routines.

How it worked: both wing-backs are set as throw-in takers and their decisions attribute values are 11 (WBR) and 12 (WBL). In the first match, I tried, my WBR took 7 throw-ins - 5x long routine, 2x short routine. We scored one goal after a long throw-in routine, the rest of these long routines were lost balls as 1) the positioning of other players were wrong and 2) he just sent the ball to nowhere. Our WBL players took 5 throws in the same match and all of them were short routines [I should also note that both our WBL players have Long Throws attribute value of 9 and 10 respectively in comparison with the WBR who has 10].

Experiment? I decided to try one simple thing in the upcoming match - I took a player with the highest value of decisions to attribute and I set him as our throw-in taker despite his long throws attribute being very low.

Result?

• 1st match: We had 14 Throw-Ins during the match. Lukasz Tralka, our CM(D) player with the best decisions attribute was set as the only one throw-in taker for both left and right side. He took 6 from these 14 throw-ins - one long routine, five short routines. The rest throws were taken by wing-backs.

• 2nd match: We had 13 Throw-Ins. Tralka took 4 of them - 3x long, 1x short.

So, what’s the point? As it stands, even if Tralka would have both decisions and long throws attributes values of 20, he would not take all throws despite he is set as the one and only taker. Because the game does what she wants.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS GAME AND PLAYERS’ POSITIONING?

Another thing I don’t like about FM and set pieces is that the game ignores what you’ve set in the set-piece creator. You don’t have to scroll up to check the base set-up of the routine again, I will leave the comparison here.

There are four attacking roles: Attack Near Post, Lurk At Near Post, Mark Keeper and Lurk At Far Post. Three of them are right. The same as both players set to Lurk Outside Area. But where is the MCL - number 16 - set to Lurk At Far Post? He is in the middle of the opponent’s half. WHY? I didn’t set him to Stay back if needed. There are already three players set to Stay Back.

That means we are one player short in the penalty area despite that I counted with four and I wanted one player will attack the far post or lurk around the far post to make possible flick-ons.

Another thing is that my STCR is set to Mark Keeper. Why he is the first player and why does he acts as the one who is set to Attack Near Post? I really don’t know and the fact this situation ended with a goal means nothing.

The issue in the picture above didn’t change even when I set some different players to Lurk At Far Post. And it doesn’t matter if it was a defensive or offensive player. This player always stayed in a different position and the area around the far post was not occupied.

I’m absolutely not against this routine, it can look very nice (and my version works decently considering two scored goals in the first five matches since setting the routine) and it can be very useful when it works. But it’s not everything just perfect and “Rory Delap-esque'“.

If nothing more, it’s important to check how your players act and how they take this routine in combination with other tactical things considering their strong and weak attributes and behaviour.

Sometimes, we can do nothing about some things, for example, the positioning I shared above. But we have to find something positive about it and try to take advantage of it.

Thanks for reading, take care.