YouUnastanFren Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 (edited) As @Laughable Chimp mentioned on page 1, over the first half of this season we are 20th for average time of first substitution (or 1st depending on how you look at it I guess). That is either good, bad or neither, I have no idea which. Maybe the table will give us a clue. No. Club Av. Min 1 Sheffield Utd 57.38 2 Liverpool 58.07 3 Leeds 59.00 4 Brighton 60.25 5 Man City 60.32 6 Spurs 60.47 7 Man Utd 61.07 8 Burnley 61.19 9 Arsenal 61.25 10 WBA 61.28 11 Leicester City 63.16 12 Newcastle 63.25 13 West Ham 65.10 14 Wolves 65.57 15 Chelsea 66.07 16 Southampton 66.38 17 Fulham 67.53 18 Everton 68.53 19 Crystal Palace 70.32 20 Aston Villa 73.25 Looking at the rankings of other teams, there seems to be almost no correlation between ranking in this table and league position. But maybe there is a correlation between this table and points taken from winning positions. Surely those clever teams who make early subs convert more leads into wins! Nope. Seems like reality is more complicated than more or earlier subs equals more gooderer goals and points for us. In theory, you would think that bringing 3 players on with fresh legs would make you a better team. But that would only definitely be the case in a vacuum with 14 clone players of identical ability and fitness levels. In a real life scenario, there is not only variance in ability and fitness between all players, but in familiarity with the system and tactics, confidence levels, mental toughness, familiarity with teammates and a host of other things. I have no real problem with someone saying they had the impression based on the general flow of the game that making a specific substitution may have given us an advantage. That's an opinion and if it can be explained and backed up then that's fine. The problem is with the absolute certainty I've seen in some posts that making any substitution earlier would guarantee us more points. Even IF you had all of the biometric fatigue data of all of the players and were privy to all tactical meetings and decisions of our coaches you still couldn't be sure what effect, if any, making a sub would have imo. Edited February 8, 2021 by YouUnastanFren 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted April 5, 2021 Share Posted April 5, 2021 Worked a treat yesterday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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