Exclusive: How world's leading ex-Liverpool throw-in guru is helping Arsenal win games

Thomas Gronnemark’s phone rarely stays quiet for long. The moment a club recognises that football’s most common dead-ball situation is also its most under-exploited, the 51-year-old Dane becomes the first call. Now Arsenal are the latest to enlist the man who turned Liverpool from Premier League throw-in strugglers into the division’s retention kings, and Gronnemark believes the Emirates is the perfect laboratory for his next evolution of the discipline.

Speaking exclusively to The Sporting News, the sport’s only dedicated throw-in coach outlined how a childhood fascination in 1980s Denmark matured into a methodology that has already collected seven major trophies at Anfield and is now being woven into Mikel Arteta’s title-chasing side.

“I was already obsessed with throw-ins as a small boy in the mid-80s,” Gronnemark recalls. “My older cousin was very good at them, and when you look up to someone older, you copy them.” A promising U19 winger with an unusually long delivery, he drifted into elite athletics and Olympic bobsleigh, experiences that forged the biomechanical and analytical spine of his coaching. “Sprinting taught me a lot about the body… bobsleigh taught me structure, analysis, organisation. Everything was systematic, very detailed, with lots of video.”

By 2004 the realisation hit: no textbooks, no courses, no language existed for what he saw as a treasure trove of free possessions. Gronnemark built his own curriculum, cold-called Danish Superliga club Viborg, and watched them rattle in goals from rehearsed touchline moves. The three-pillar philosophy—long, fast, clever—was born.

Long throws stretch the pitch; a five-to-fifteen-metre technique upgrade expands usable space without a single gym session. Fast throws punish disorganisation, springing counters or smothering opponents before they can set traps. Clever throws manipulate space through synchronised movement. “Not just one player, but two, three, four players working together,” he stresses. Instead of choreographing every pattern, Gronnemark arms players with decision trees: identify the two “stupid” areas, pick from the three favourable ones, execute.

The numbers persuaded Jürgen Klopp in 2018. Liverpool ranked 18th in Premier League throw-in retention; twelve months later they sat first, a platform for the Champions League, Super Cup, Club World Cup, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Community Shield harvested over the next five seasons. Andy Robertson added seven metres to his delivery, enlarging the left-flank throw-in zone by more than 500 square metres, while Jordan Henderson operated as a free presser, allowing Liverpool to defend restarts without conceding fouls and finish multiple campaigns as the league’s fairest side.

Gronnemark bristles at the “marginal gains” label. “We’re talking about gigantic gains. The only reason it’s called marginal is because it’s been ignored for so long.” Elite players, he insists, are no harder to improve than amateurs. “The throw-in level in the Champions League is not better than in the third division in Croatia. That sounds strange, but it’s true.”

Now he is repeating the exercise alongside set-piece specialist Nicolas Jöver, a former Brentford colleague now shaping Arsenal’s dead-ball output. “My job is to maximise the number of great throw-ins,” Gronnemark says. “But fans shouldn’t judge on one moment. Look at the percentages.” Early signs suggest the Gunners have already added variety: quick touchline restarts have launched rapid switches, while rehearsed dummy runs create the pockets into which Declan Rice or Martin Ødegaard can collect under minimal pressure.

Gronnemark’s broader mission remains unchanged—force the sport to recognise that every touchline restart is a potential attacking or defensive weapon. “Sometimes slow is not time-wasting. Sometimes waiting creates space. If people start watching the touchline more closely, they’ll see just how much is happening.”

With Arsenal locked in a three-way title race decided by razor-thin margins, the Dane’s quietly revolutionary work could yet prove the difference between May heartbreak and a first championship in two decades.

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