Arsenal have turned to the world’s leading throw-in coach, Thomas Gronnemark, in a further effort to weaponise set pieces and use marginal gains in their push to win the Premier League.
Gronnemark, who helped Liverpool become champions during a title-laden stint with the club under Jürgen Klopp, has been working with Arsenal as a consultant, visiting their training ground to share his knowledge and techniques.
Mikel Arteta’s team are already the Premier League’s most prolific scorers from set pieces, converting from 12 corner kicks in 2025-26 thanks to the work of their set-piece coach Nicolas Jover. Now — in a season where long throw-ins have returned and goals following throws have spiked — they are looking at what England assistant head coach Anthony Barry once dubbed “the undervalued set piece”.
Gronnemark, 50, a Danish former footballer and athlete, once held the world record for launching the longest throw-in (51.33 metres, in 2010), but since pioneering throw-in coaching two decades ago he has developed a complex methodology, where long throws are only one tool and teams are also taught to use throws to retain possession and initiate attacks.
He has consulted for Brentford, Borussia Dortmund, Ajax, FC Midtjylland, Union Saint-Gilloise and JEF United in Japan, and in 2018 was invited by Klopp to join Liverpool’s staff.
“I was totally in shock when Jürgen called me. I was visiting a chocolate shop with my family; I saw the +44 and thought it was an English guy trying to sell me pens. I listened to the voicemail and it was a message from Jürgen. I tried to call him back, but he didn’t pick up.
Former Liverpool manager Klopp, left, had every reason to look pleased, as Gronnemark helped his side win the title
TIMESGRAB
“My heart was just pounding … I took the call on my way home in the car, where I drove directly into a grass field when he called,” remembered Gronnemark in an interview published just before Christmas with football writer Zach Lowy.
“He told me that he was sitting in a beach chair, reading the German newspaper Bild while on vacation in Tenerife, and he came across an article about me . . . he had never heard of a throw-in coach before.”
Gronnemark spent five years in Klopp’s backroom team and in his first season Liverpool leapt from 18th in the Premier League for possession retention after throw-ins to first. They won the Champions League that campaign and first Premier League title in 30 years the next.
Arsenal, top of the table by six points, are trying to win their first Premier League in 22 seasons and Arteta, their manager, has been painstaking in his search for the smallest advantages, even ordering the pullout cover over the players tunnel at the Emirates to be removed to make the walkout more intimidating for visiting teams.
Set pieces have long been an area he has sought to exploit. Arsenal’s mastery at corners and free kicks stretches back to soon after Jover’s arrival in 2021, and Arteta claims he realised set pieces would be a crucial element in his approach as long ago as 2015-16, when he was undertaking his coaching badges.
“I wasn’t [at Arsenal] but ten years ago I said, ‘It is a massive thing to do that’, and I started to have a vision, try to implement a method and try to be surrounded by the best people to deliver that,” he said in October.
Gronnemark passes on his words of wisdom at Liverpool’s training ground
NICK TAYLOR/LIVERPOOL FC/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY IMAGES
While assisting Pep Guardiola at Manchester City he met Jover, who was City’s technical coach specialising in set pieces and recruited Jover less than two years after taking over at Arsenal.
“I went to City with the best manager in the world and I could see where we could have improvements and it was clear because at some point I was doing [set-plays] and I wasn’t the best person in the world to do that,” Arteta said.
“So if I am not the best person in the world to do that and the best method to do it, there are ways to improve it. And you could see that straight afterwards what started to happen.”
At Liverpool, Gronnemark was also able to improve the throwing abilities of individual players, helping Andy Robertson increase his distance from 19 metres to 27 metres. “He changed our throw-in game completely,” Klopp said.
Gronnemark, who departed Liverpool in 2023, told Lowy: “Liverpool are always welcome to call me. The only way I wouldn’t say yes to Liverpool is if I were already coaching another top Premier League team that’s actually a competitor.”
It will be fascinating to see what impact he has on Arsenal’s title campaign, but he has always projected confidence in his methods.
“Improving throw-ins has a high impact, because you have 40-60 of them in ever match. It’s easy to improve throw-ins … with the right training,” said Gronnemark in a recent social media post.