What can Hearts fans expect from new signing Tomas Magnusson

The Icelandic midfielder made his debut as a late substitute and spoke afterwards about the crazy atmosphere and his decision to join Hearts.

Tom Irving provides the lowdown on the new boy.

The last time Hearts signed a player directly from Iceland, or an Icelandic national for that matter, was when Eggert Jonsson moved to Gorgie from KF Fjardabyggdar.

Now, with Tomas Magnusson joining the Derek McInnes era from one of the nation's most historic and successful clubs, Valur Reykjavik, we finally have another Icelandic player pulling on the famous maroon.

As is the norm this window, the club are plucking players from all over. On paper, Magnusson is very much a wildcard signing. The 22-year-old has only spent 2,754 minutes in the top tier in Iceland and spent the 2024 season in the second tier, helping guide IBV Vestmannaeyjar to promotion. His performances earned him a move to Valur.

In all, he’s spent more time in the second tier in Iceland, playing 3,752 minutes across three seasons. The only time Magnusson spent outside of Iceland was a brief spell in NCAA Division I college soccer at Providence College. Now, even though I’m involved with college soccer, with my role with College Scout USA, and I’ve watched the Icelandic league on numerous occasions as a scout, Magnusson is not a player I was aware of.

So what can we expect with the signing of the 6ft2in Icelander? 

The Icelandic league

When comparing the league to Scotland, Opta lists four Icelandic teams in the top 15 of both leagues, excluding Rangers and Celtic. There are a few teams that would either be Scottish Premiership standard or close to it, with the rest being very much at a Scottish Championship level. 

(Image: Opta)

The data

With the Icelandic season only 16 games old, and Magnusson only playing 436 minutes so far. Ideally, we’d be looking for around double that for good quality data. Now, while the low number of minutes may sound worrying, he has started and played pretty much every minute of the last nine games, including three games in the Conference League qualifiers. 

Tomas Magnusson 2025 data (Image: Tom Irving)

I’m going to go over his data from the full 2024 season instead.

It’s obvious that Magnusson is impressive defensively, going by this data. He’s involved in more defensive duels than 96 per cent of the other central midfielders in the league. And whilst he doesn’t win as high a percentage as we’d hope, his 12 successful defensive actions per game show that the effort to be involved defensively pays off.

He’s involved in more aerial duels than any other central midfielder in the league, and wins a very impressive 62 per cent of these. Magnusson also ranks as the best in the league when it comes to interceptions, showing his ability to read the game and also aiding in his high ranking for successful defensive actions. 

Tomas Magnusson 2024 data (Image: Tom Irving)

In possession, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag.

To me, it looks like a player who is happy to try slightly riskier passes that maybe don’t have as good a success rate. He doesn’t have a very high pass accuracy, but does play a lot of forward passes, passes to the final third and through passes. He also dribbles often and gets involved in offensive duels, which again leads me to think he may be included to try to progress the ball by dribbling it and not just passing. 

Magnusson scores highly in the attacking data, but it needs to be noted that the league season in 1.Deild (second tier) is only 22 games long, which means his impressive goal and assist record only amounts to three goals and three assists. This is something he seems to have improved on in 2025, though, with two goals in three games in the Conference League, and a goal every 180 minutes in the league. 

The eye test

I watched Magnusson play a game in both the 2024 and 2025 seasons. He played as the holding midfielder in both games in either a 4-4-2 or 4-1-2-3 system.

The role he played would probably be best described as a deep-lying, defence-minded playmaker. As we saw from his data, he’s got great defensive qualities, but he’s not just an old-school defensive midfielder. 

Out of possession, I could immediately tell that Jamestown must have some kind of filter on every player that Hearts sign, something along the lines of 'amount of time the opposition has on the ball before being pressed when X player is nearby'.

He’s fantastic at reading the game and not just working hard to press the ball, he actually anticipates where the next ball will be played and makes the effort to move towards that area to press the receiver of the pass before it’s been made.

He did this throughout both games and had a good ability to arrive in time to press the receiver or intercept the ball, helping Valur win the ball back in that way instead of getting there early and stopping the option of the pass.

He’s very busy in that aspect, working hard, pressing different players and giving the opposition midfielders very little time on the ball.

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Aerially, he is brilliant, again showing impressive anticipation for where the ball is going to be and then backing it up with the ability to compete for and win the header. We saw this danger out of possession as well as in possession at things like corners – something set-piece coach Ross Grant will be very happy to see.

In some ways, from a defensive point of view, I think he’s what Hearts fans expected Oisin McEntee to be, though we have now seen that he is much better with more freedom to play a bit wider, get up the park and press higher. Magnusson much prefers to do his defensive work centrally and more in the traditional area for a central midfielder to operate, and less in a higher press.

In possession, it took me quite a bit of time to work out which was his strong foot. He probably played a bit more often with his right foot in the opening minutes of the game, but the first longer pass he made was with his left foot – a lovely dinked, curling ball that went right over the defensive line and into the winger's run along the touchline.

Ten seconds later, the ball was lost. Who other than Magnusson recovered it outside the box, then played a brilliant right-footed cross into the danger area. He wasn’t afraid to play both shorter and longer passes with either foot. He’s not exactly Paul Scholes when it comes to his range of passing, but he still does show up well.

He likes to get on the ball often and, yes, will regularly make the sideways and backwards passes as all central midfielders do, but he also likes to go forward when possible. The progressive passes he makes aren’t always easy, and this matches what we saw in his data.

He likes to find wee gaps between opposition players and play pinpoint passes through them to his team-mates, often helping to get his team into good positions through these slightly riskier passes. If the pass doesn’t make it, he’s always ready to help recover the ball. I also saw several good, longer switches of play, which were encouraging.

Although his dribbling data was pretty good, I think he’s more of a passer than a dribbler. He’ll explore the space when it’s available but won't look to go on mazy runs. 

Conclusion

Magnusson will, as noted by Derek McInnes, "bring a presence to the middle of the park with his height and athleticism, and he’s a very dynamic player in that he can both defend and attack".

He reads the game well, will thrive in a Scottish football midfield where there are plenty of loose and second balls and he will actively try to progress the game from deep with his forward passing.

And he adds to Hearts' set-piece threat.