Let’s get this out of the way in the first line, I’m delighted by the season so far. I’m not moaning, I’m not whinging, I just want to ask a question. Because there’s one thing about our season that I don’t understand.
We seem to spend a lot of time towards the end of games holding on, sitting deeper and deeper with tired legs. The stats show that we’ve conceded a third of all our goals in the last five minutes of games including picking up four draws and three games that should have been draws ending in defeat. A total of eleven dropped points. Now, obviously, it’s not all one-way traffic, we also picked up draws against Bristol City and Leeds (who can forget!) in injury time so, let’s call it nine points dropped. That would see us five points clear at the top (before Leeds v Burley) so the question has to be asked as to why we are dropping so many points in that way.
We’ve all heard commentators and those in the crowd around us say the team needs ‘freshening up’, ‘fresh legs’ or my personal favourite, co-commentator’s specific advice ‘he’s got to change something’. When I was a child, I remember my Dad talking about the number 12. Literally the substitute. Then it became two and now, all these years later we have nine on the bench, with five available to come on. Back when it was just one or two subs, it was quite usual to see no substitutions made during a game unless there was an injury, but managers have become far better at using fifteen or sixteen players across the ninety minutes.
Ten outfield players are expected to get through 900 minutes of football. Making them run 90 minutes each (no subs), often twice a week, is far harder than asking them to play an average of 60 minutes each (5 subs).
I’ll never question a manager leaving one sub on the bench, better that than get a late injury and having to play with ten men, like Derby did. But the average subs per game for most teams in the Championship is nearly four subs per game. This season, ours is 2.7. This moves the average to just over 70 minutes per player meaning our players are playing ten minutes more on average than the opposition.
Normally it’s hard to make this statistic make sense in the real world, after all, we’ve never brought on 0.7 of a sub and the player coming on very rarely plays 70 minutes. But there’s one stat for Sunderland that really supports the argument. Le Bris tends to make his substitutions on 70 minutes, if not later, a clear ten minutes after most other teams. It means we play with tired legs against fresh legs for ten minutes and those coming on have less time to affect the game. Some argue this had led to more injuries and we’ve certainly had our share this season.
I’d love to know why. I’d love to know why Le Bris doesn’t change it earlier. Is it the lack of quality on the bench (in his opinion)? Is it the ‘it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ logic? I’d love to know. If it was most of our former managers, I’d say it was a mistake. With Regis I feel confident there’ll be a logic.
But then we get to the part I simply don’t understand at all. Of our 79 league substitutions this year, 1 in 5 has come after the 85th minute and, as far as we can tell, none have come about as a result of injury. If anything, this seems to be adding to the pressure late in games rather than easing it with confusion in defence, a break in concentration and an uncertainty of instructions costing us points. Is he leaving players until they are so exhausted he feels he has no choice. Not fair on the player coming off or going on. As I say, I’m delighted with the season. To be honest, I’m amazed. But I just have this one question.
So Regis, pourquoi attendez-vous presenter changement des jouers?
