Jimmy Thelin: Who is Sunderland-linked coach and what tactics does he play?

There is a new name in the fray to be the next Sunderland head coach, but who exactly is Jimmy Thelin?

With Sunderland looking for a new head coach, there has been no shortage of names chucked into the fray.

Some, like Will Still, have been in the fray from day one and are proving tough to land. A shame, but that’s why clubs have coaches under contract. Others, such as Kim Hellberg, came and went. He was highly fancied for a while but has now joined Hammarby.

Then there are the ones who put themselves in the frame, like Scott Brown, and the many whose agents are getting them linked to the job for exposure by calling in favours from journalists. You know, Paul Heckingbottom and the like.

This week a new name has come into the running amid reports Sunderland are close to landing their top target and it’s a name with whom most are unfamiliar – Jimmy Thelin. Although, the be fair, it was always likely from the start that we’d need Google for whoever was going to replace Tony Mowbray.

Anyway, who is Jimmy Thelin and what is he all about?

Where have the Jimmy Thelin Sunderland reports come from?

The reports emerged out of nowhere really on Thursday night from respected Swedish journalist Daniel Kristoffersson.

🚨Även Jimmy Thelin har varit på intervju hos Sunderland gällande jobbet som huvudtränare. Elfsborgs succétränare var där i början av veckan. Thelin har även intresse på sig från ytterligare en klubb i The Championship och en klubb utanför Skandinavien. https://t.co/F2eh7skle9

— Daniel Kristoffersson (@DKristoffersson) December 14, 2023

He claims that Thelin was interviewed by Sunderland earlier in the week and is also wanted by another Championship club, as well as a foreign one too, believed to be Westerlo in Belgium. He has also been linked with the Sweden job following Janne Andersson’s departure.

Swansea may be the other Championship club. He was linked to them last week.

From there, Sun journalist Alan Nixon has also claimed Thelin is in the frame for the Sunderland job and the club’s top target, Thelin or not, will be in the stands to watch the Black Cats play Bristol City on Saturday.

It should be noted that it was also Daniel Kristoffersson who claimed Kim Hellberg was in the Sunderland frame. Make of that what you will.

Who is Jimmy Thelin?

Jimmy Thelin - success with Elfsborg :: IMAGO / TT

Jimmy Thelin is a Swedish head coach who has had some success with Elfsborg in the Allsvenskan.

His didn’t have much of a playing career but got a coaching opportunity at Jönköpings Södra IF in 20014 and guided them to the Allsvenskan, the top tier of Swedish football.

He then moved on to Elfsborg in 2018 and has been there ever since, slowly improving them and finishing second twice, including the season that just finished in November.

Jimmy Thelin tactics

Whenever you cover tactical breakdowns, there is always a large degree of subjectivity involved. That is a large part of the beauty of football itself.

Sit in the stands at the Stadium of Light when Sunderland are passing out slowly from the back and into midfield, for example, and you are probably within earshot of those both praising it and criticising it. So there is no good or bad, just personal taste and then successful or unsuccessful.

Thelin’s tactics have certainly been successful in Sweden with Elfsbog missing out on the league title last season on goal difference alone. In truth, some would say they choked a little having taken just one point from the final two games, the last of which was an away showdown with Malmo that was essentially a one-match shootout for the title.

He almost always uses a quite aggressive 4-2-3-1 system with a relatively high defensive line.

Statistically, Thelin’s tactics have the stigma of the term ‘long ball’ attached to them. At least, that is what people hear, often with visions of peak crazy gang Wimbledon in their heads, but it’s actually ‘long pass.’ In football statistics, a ‘long pass’ is simply a pass which is longer than 30 yards.

Thelin’s teams do a lot of them. In both 2022 and 2033, Elfsborg had the most successful long passes in the Swedish league. The word ‘successful’ is important there, because it displays a lot of control.

They completed around 37 long passes per match on average, significantly more than the 22.7 and 24.2 that Sunderland have in the two seasons since they returned to the Championship.

	Sunderland 23/24	Elfsborg 2023
Average possession	58.2% (3)	46.5% (10)
Accurate passes per match	452.1 (5)	308.0 (11)
Accurate long passes per match	22.7 (17)	36.7 (1)
Possession won in final 3rd per match	4.8 (9)	6.9 (2)
Goals per game	1.5 (9)	2.0 (3)
Goals against per game	1.1 (4)	0.9 (1)
Clean sheets	6/21 - 28.5% (11)	13/30 - 43.3% (2)

Note: League ranking in brackets

The success rate of those passes show that they are generally switches of plays and successful transitions though rather than the ‘lump it up to the big man’ type, which is just as well as if he’s got more chance of finding a functional moral compass in Newcastle right now that an effective target-man type striker in Sunderland.

If there is one word you’d probably use to describe Thelin’s tactics in Elfsborg it is ‘efficient,’ although others might say ‘destructive’ is closer to the mark.

His Elfsborg team are not obsessed with possession and don’t pass for passing sake. They certainly don’t look to take the pace out of the game, as we saw Sunderland do under Mowbray at times.

Elfsborg averaged just 46.5% possession last season. That saw them rank 10th out of just 16 teams. For context, Sunderland are at 58.2% possession this season, the third highest in the Championship.

Thelin’s attacking ideals are all about pressing high, counter-pressing to recover lost possession quickly in the final third, and quickly striking whilst the space has opened up.

On average, Elfsborg won possession in the final third seven times per match last season. Sunderland are going at around four times per match so far this campaign.

Defensively, if the high press fails then Elfsborg tend to retreat into a compact 4-4-2 mid-block with the attacking midfielder becoming the second striker.

It’s effective, and Elfsborg had the best defensive record in the Allsvenskan last season, leaking just 26 goals in 30 matches.

Would Thelin be a good fit for Sunderland?

Well, this is where the subjectivity part comes into it, right? If you like your football slow and steady with an emphasis on keeping the ball, then Thelin won’t pique your interest much. At least, he’s never shown any inclination to play that way.

His teams are generally all about high energy pressing in the final third and injecting pace into the attack at the right times.

In that sense, he would certainly have a squad at Sunderland that would fit his football, even if it might not be to everyone’s taste.

The big question I guess is what does Kristjaan Speakman consider to be the Sunderland ‘identity’? He has used that word a lot in interviews, and it’s clear it is very defined in his own head, but he hasn’t really given an in-depth description of what it is.

In theory, though, if a head coach can successfully get Sunderland playing an aggressive and high-energy form on football on the front foot, most fans would probably be happy to sacrifice style points for it.

Then again, successfully is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that statement.

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