What is the Super Sub rule in football betting?

A settlement feature on player-prop markets. If the player you backed is substituted, his replacement's statistics continue the line at the original odds. bet365 call it Sub On Play On; Sky Bet and Paddy Power call it Super Sub; Betfair call it Safe Sub. Which markets and competitions it covers is set by each bookmaker.

What was the most productive substitution pair in Gameweek 1?

Martin Odegaard and Mikel Merino at Arsenal produced five shots and two on target between them. Mathias Jensen and Yegor Yarmolyuk at Brentford combined for four fouls, three shots and four tackles, and Issahaku Fatawu and Kasey McAteer at Ipswich for five tackles.

How often did a replacement take a pair past a line the starter had not reached?

93 times across the nine completed matches, at the time of writing, counting ten standard lines. Tackles and fouls accounted for 62 of them. These are match statistics rather than settled bets.

Which markets does the substitute effect help least?

Shots on target. Fifty-two Premier League starters came off in Gameweek 1 without one, and in only six of those cases did the replacement manage one. A shot on target is a rare event to ask of a player with 25 minutes, unlike a tackle or a foul.

Do these statistics change after the match?

Yes. Provider corrections land for days afterwards. A tackle was added to the Brighton v Aston Villa data while this edition was being written, which changed one of the totals. Any figure here is a snapshot at the time of writing.

Super Sub Report: What Every Premier League Substitution Produced in Gameweek 1

Martin Ødegaard came off on 76 minutes against Coventry having had three shots, one of them on target, and made three tackles. Mikel Merino replaced him and had two more shots, one on target, in fourteen minutes.

Between them: five shots, two on target, three tackles.

That pairing matters because of how Super Sub works. bet365 call it Sub On Play On, Sky Bet and Paddy Power call it Super Sub, Betfair call it Safe Sub, and on the markets it covers the principle is the same - when the player is substituted, his replacement's tally continues the line. So the figure that counts is the pair's combined total, not the starter's own. We have a full explainer on the rule and which books offer it.

This is the first edition of a weekly column. Every Premier League round, we take every substitution and publish what the two players produced between them.

Gameweek 1: the pairs

Each cell shows what the player who came off produced, plus what his replacement produced, and the player total for the pair. Nine matches, 81 substitutions; these are ten of the most productive pairings.

Match	Came off	Came on	Fouls	Shots	On target	Tackles
Arsenal 3-0 Coventry	Martin Ødegaard (76')	Mikel Merino (14m)	0 + 1 = 1	3 + 2 = 5	1 + 1 = 2	3 + 0 = 3
Brentford 3-0 Tottenham	Mathias Jensen (67')	Yegor Yarmolyuk (23m)	3 + 1 = 4	2 + 1 = 3	1 + 0 = 1	2 + 2 = 4
Brighton 4-0 Aston Villa	Jack Hinshelwood (64')	C. Kostoulas (26m)	0 + 0 = 0	3 + 2 = 5	2 + 0 = 2	2 + 1 = 3
Everton 2-0 Crystal Palace	JP. Mateta (63')	J. Strand Larsen (27m)	2 + 2 = 4	2 + 1 = 3	0 + 1 = 1	2 + 0 = 2
Ipswich 2-1 Sunderland	Julio Enciso (71')	Jack Clarke (19m)	1 + 0 = 1	3 + 2 = 5	0 + 1 = 1	1 + 1 = 2
Ipswich 2-1 Sunderland	Issahaku Fatawu (66')	Kasey McAteer (24m)	1 + 1 = 2	0 + 0 = 0	0 + 0 = 0	4 + 1 = 5
Newcastle 2-2 Liverpool	Florian Wirtz (63')	A. Mac Allister (27m)	0 + 0 = 0	3 + 0 = 3	1 + 0 = 1	1 + 2 = 3
Brentford 3-0 Tottenham	Dango Ouattara (67')	Jaidon Anthony (23m)	3 + 1 = 4	2 + 1 = 3	0 + 0 = 0	0 + 2 = 2
Brighton 4-0 Aston Villa	Yasin Ayari (64')	Costinha (26m)	2 + 0 = 2	2 + 2 = 4	0 + 1 = 1	0 + 1 = 1
Nott'm Forest 0-1 Leeds	Harry Wilson (66')	Noah Okafor (24m)	1 + 1 = 2	0 + 0 = 0	0 + 0 = 0	2 + 2 = 4

The Fatawu and Wilson rows are the ones to sit with. Neither pair troubled the goalkeeper at all, and both produced a healthy tackle count - a reminder that the volume in these markets is defensive far more often than it is attacking.

How often the pair got somewhere the starter did not

A second way of reading the same 81 substitutions. For each standard line, how many times did the player who came off finish below it, and how many times did the pair's combined total reach it anyway?

Line	Starter finished below it	Pair total reached it
2+ tackles	59	15
2+ fouls	60	14
3+ tackles	70	13
1+ foul	33	12
3+ shots	64	10
1+ shot	22	8
1+ tackle	24	8
1+ shot on target	52	6
2+ shots	47	4
2+ shots on target	75	3

That is 93 times across the round, at the time of writing, that a pair's combined figure landed on the right side of a standard line when the starter's own did not.

Read the narrow version and it sharpens. Take only the players who came off exactly one short: on 2+ tackles that happened 35 times and the replacement supplied the missing tackle in 13 of them, and on 3+ shots it happened 17 times and the replacement supplied the shot in 8.

The market that behaves differently is shots on target. Fifty-two players came off without one; six had a replacement who managed one. It is simply a rarer event to ask of somebody with 25 minutes, which is worth knowing before you decide the rule is worth more than it is.

The busiest cameos

Substitutes who put up numbers without any help from the man they replaced:

Joe Willock (34 mins, Newcastle) - a shot, one on target, two tackles and two fouls. The most complete cameo of the round.
Yéremy Pino (35 mins, Crystal Palace) - two shots, two tackles, a foul.
Evann Guessand (27 mins, Crystal Palace) - a shot on target, a tackle, two fouls.
Anan Khalaili (35 mins, Crystal Palace) - four tackles, more than most starters managed.
Mikel Merino (14 mins, Arsenal) - two shots, one on target, in a quarter of an hour.

Crystal Palace appear three times. Two down at Goodison, they changed things early and their substitutes chased the game - which is the game-state effect in miniature, and a reminder that what a replacement does is shaped by the scoreline he walks into.

What to watch in Gameweek 2

Volume markets carry the effect. Tackles and fouls account for 62 of the 93 threshold crossings above. Shots on target account for nine.
Time on the pitch is the lever. The replacements who put up numbers here mostly had 20 minutes or more. A change on 85 minutes rarely moves anything.
The bench decides it. A holding midfielder replaced by another holding midfielder keeps a tackle count ticking. Replaced by a striker because the team is chasing, it stops - and the shot count starts instead.
It can go the other way. If the player is his side's best tackler, nobody replacing him matches that rate, and the pair's total grows more slowly than his own would have. The explainer works through that case.

Our player projections and the Bet Builder tool model a player's own expected output, which is the right thing to model for an ordinary market and an incomplete picture on one where a replacement's numbers are added to his.

What this column does and does not tell you

These are match statistics, not bet settlements. Everything above is what players did on a pitch. We do not know which lines a bookmaker offered, whether anybody backed them, whether Super Sub applied to that market, or how any individual bet was settled. Nothing here should be read as a bet won or lost.
Market coverage belongs to the bookmaker. Which markets and competitions carry the rule varies by operator and can change. Check the operator's own terms.
The numbers move after the match. Provider stat corrections land for days. One of the figures above changed while this edition was being written, when a tackle was added to the Brighton game. Treat the totals as a snapshot.
Nine matches, not ten. Fulham v Chelsea had not been played when this went out. From Gameweek 2 the column runs on the Tuesday, once the round is complete.
Lines overlap. A pair reaching 1+ tackles may also reach 2+. The 93 counts thresholds, not bets.

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