Jaka Bijol played the first half of Leeds United 1-1 Brentford without making a tackle. Ao Tanaka replaced him at half time and made three. So the pair's combined tackle count stood at zero at the break and finished on three - every tackle threshold this column tracks, reached entirely by the man who came on.
It was the round's second such change. A day earlier, Hidemasa Morita had gone off at the break of Coventry City 0-1 Hull City without a tackle, and Lucas Gourna-Douath made three in his 44 minutes. Two half-time substitutions, two pair totals that went from nothing to three.
That is the arithmetic this column exists for. Under Super Sub - bet365 call it Sub On Play On, Sky Bet and Paddy Power call it Super Sub, Betfair call it Safe Sub - the markets it covers do not end a player prop at the substitution: the replacement's tally continues the line. 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 second edition of the weekly column. Nine of Gameweek 2's ten matches are in the data at the time of writing - Aston Villa v Arsenal is played on Monday evening, after this edition was written - and those nine produced 83 substitutions.
Each cell shows what the player who came off produced, plus what his replacement produced, and the player total for the pair. These are twelve of the round's most productive pairings.
| Match | Came off | Came on | Fouls | Shots | On target | Tackles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coventry 0-1 Hull | Elliot Stroud (59') | Liam Millar (31m) | 2 + 0 = 2 | 1 + 3 = 4 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 0 = 0 |
| Sunderland 1-0 Fulham | Brian Brobbey (64') | Wilson Isidor (26m) | 1 + 0 = 1 | 1 + 3 = 4 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 0 = 0 |
| Leeds 1-1 Brentford | Jayden Bogle (68') | Daniel James (22m) | 1 + 0 = 1 | 0 + 4 = 4 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 2 + 0 = 2 |
| Man Utd 5-2 Ipswich | Marcus Rashford (80') | Patrick Dorgu (10m) | 0 + 0 = 0 | 4 + 2 = 6 | 2 + 1 = 3 | 3 + 1 = 4 |
| Man Utd 5-2 Ipswich | Kobbie Mainoo (80') | Andrey Santos (10m) | 0 + 1 = 1 | 3 + 0 = 3 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 3 + 3 = 6 |
| Leeds 1-1 Brentford | Jaka Bijol (46') | Ao Tanaka (44m) | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 3 = 3 |
| Coventry 0-1 Hull | Hidemasa Morita (46') | L. Gourna-Douath (44m) | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 3 = 3 |
| Coventry 0-1 Hull | Loum Tchaouna (59') | T. Sakamoto (31m) | 0 + 0 = 0 | 1 + 1 = 2 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 1 + 2 = 3 |
| Liverpool 2-2 Nott'm Forest | Milos Kerkez (71') | K. Tsimikas (19m) | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 1 + 0 = 1 |
| Leeds 1-1 Brentford | Jaidon Anthony (61') | Dango Ouattara (29m) | 2 + 0 = 2 | 2 + 1 = 3 | 0 + 0 = 0 | 0 + 1 = 1 |
| Man Utd 5-2 Ipswich | Emersonn (46') | Chuba Akpom (44m) | 1 + 0 = 1 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 1 = 1 | 0 + 0 = 0 |
| Bournemouth 1-1 Everton | Tyrique George (62') | Brennan Johnson (28m) | 0 + 1 = 1 | 2 + 0 = 2 | 1 + 0 = 1 | 1 + 1 = 2 |
The top three rows are the round's theme. Liam Millar, Wilson Isidor and Daniel James all came off the bench and had three or four shots each - more than the man each of them replaced had managed in an hour. Where those chances come from is exactly what our team creativity pages track: the Leeds key passes page shows who actually creates their shots, and the Sunderland shots page puts Isidor's cameo volume against the team's season numbers.
And note the Anthony-Ouattara row: in Gameweek 1 the same two Brentford players appeared in this table the other way round, Ouattara off on 67 minutes and Anthony replacing him. Some pairings are one shift split between two players, whichever order they run in.
A second way of reading the same 83 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 | 53 | 10 |
| 1+ foul | 31 | 9 |
| 3+ tackles | 66 | 8 |
| 1+ shot | 33 | 8 |
| 2+ shots | 55 | 8 |
| 2+ fouls | 60 | 7 |
| 3+ shots | 67 | 5 |
| 1+ shot on target | 56 | 5 |
| 1+ tackle | 29 | 4 |
| 2+ shots on target | 74 | 1 |
That is 65 times across nine matches, 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. With Gameweek 1's ten matches included, the season count stands at 165 across 19 fixtures.
The narrow read held up where it usually does. Of the starters who came off exactly one tackle short of 2+, the replacement supplied the missing tackle in 8 of 24 cases - one in three. On 3+ tackles it was 5 of 13. Shots on target stayed the weak market: 56 players came off without one and only five had a replacement who managed one, and on the 2+ line it happened once in 18 opportunities - Romaine Mundle, on in the 90th minute with a single recorded minute to work with.
One number did move against Gameweek 1: the entry tackle line. Twenty-nine starters came off without a single tackle and only four pairs got to one, where the opening round produced eight from 24. The bench output this week went to the shot columns instead.
Substitutes who put up numbers without any help from the man they replaced:
Manchester United's double change is the one to remember. Rashford and Mainoo both came off on 80 minutes of a 5-2 win, and Dorgu and Santos produced eight countable events between them in the ten minutes that remained - so the Rashford pair's totals finished on six shots, three on target and four tackles, and the Mainoo pair's tackle count reached six.
Counting the four stat columns across the round's qualifying substitutions, Leeds' replacements added the most of any bench (10 events), then Manchester United's (9) and Hull's (8). At the other end, Manchester City's substitutes added one countable event all weekend - while in the same match, in Palace's 1-4 defeat, Zavier Gozo, Axel Disasi and Dwight McNeil all cleared entry lines off the bench. The two benches were asked very different questions, and the stats followed.
Coventry's changes are worth a line too: Gustavo Hamer and Victor Torp each added a foul to a starter who came off on one, taking both pair totals to two. Coventry's board on our team fouls page shows how much of their game lives in that market.
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. For the week's assembled angles, the daily bet builder tips column applies these numbers fixture by fixture.
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