Welcome everybody to Soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on today's episode, we're tossing ourselves into the wild and wonderful world of the throw-in. Why do they exist? Who does them well? How useful can they actually be? To answer all that and more, I'm joined by Liverpool's new throw-in consultant. It's Graham Ruffin. Hello, Graham. Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Don't tell the proper football men about my new job because they seem to get very angry at the concept of a throwing coach.

All right. Let's talk about that for a second because we are going to talk about the history of the throwin, why throwans exist, people who famously were quite good at taking them.

But I was reading a bunch of articles about, well, I read two articles, about Thomas Granomark, the Liverpool

throwing consultant. He is no longer with the club, but he is, I think, liaise with many,

many different clubs around Europe. And it does feel like the reaction to him is one of just

consternation or scorn. And it's so telling to me right there, to your point about the proper the proper football man that like rather than be inquisitive and interested in why a coach like yurkin klop would want to explore the nuances of throw-ins it's just immediate like oh can i be the kickoff consultant i don't understand why there's such a reason as well there should be a kickoff consultant. Probably. Given how often people are just like, you know what?

Kick it long and we'll see what happens. I feel like maybe a little bit of variety wouldn't be the worst thing. Yeah, I remember when that story broke in, I think it was Paul Merson. I actually like Paul Merson as a person, but he is kind of the epitome of a proper football man and him, him losing his mind on Sky Sports News at the thought of Liverpool employing someone to help them with a thing that according to what's his name again? I haven't got it at my note. Thomas Grunnaman. Gronomen, I believe it is. Yep. That guy. Grannamark. According to him in his analysis, there are 40 to 60 throw-ins per match.

That is a lot of throw-ins per match.

So it makes sense for a manager or a team or whatever to look at different ways to perform better at them.

Absolutely.

And like two things there.

First of all, 4 to 60, I think he is fond of pointing out,

is a much larger number than the combined

number of corners and direct set pieces you are likely to get. So it makes sense to look at ways

to maybe get more value out of throw-ins. On top of that, this is another point I saw him make,

that people only think it's about teaching them to throw in long. And that was the joke I think Andy Gray made, you know, the pillar of wise commentary, Andy Gray, saying like, let me guess. It's like put the ball behind your head and then throw it. And his point, I like this quote, they only wanted to talk about long throw-ins and they thought I was crazy. But when you score a goal from a long throw, it's clear what a weapon you have. But sometimes it's about creating space, keeping the ball, switching play,

and then scoring, say, 15 seconds later. And that's a big part of what he was brought in to do,

was basically help with possession retention off of the throw-ins. And for teams that want to

have more possession and dominate possession and control the game via possession, making

throwans into a 50-50 situation doesn't really do that. So it makes a lot of sense why you would

want to explore your options and maybe get that 1% 2% edge. I don't, again, understand why that

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