The art of the substitution: Just one assist off the bench, slower to change than 13 other nations… Gareth Southgate trusted his 'gut' in Gelsenkirchen but here's where England boss can up his game

Martin O’Neill is talking substitutes, specifically the one he made in the 93rd minute of his first match in charge of Aston Villa on August 19, 2006, a 1-1 draw at Arsenal.

‘It was Arsenal's first Premier League game at the Emirates Stadium,’ O’Neill tells Mail Sport. ‘Doug Ellis, the owner, was in the dressing room afterwards. He said, “Can I see you on Monday?”

‘So I went to that meeting and he said, “Why did you put Martin Laursen on in the last few minutes on Saturday?” I said, “Arsenal had equalised and were forsaking their passing game to push balls into the penalty area. In the few minutes he was on, Martin headed three clear. Why?” He said, “Because he is on a bonus of £3,000 an appearance!”’

O’Neill was unaware of that pay-when-you-play clause, having only been at Villa for two weeks. Not that it would have mattered had he known. He would call upon Laursen again if the Danish defender was needed – and he did, bringing him on in the 83rd minute of a 1-1 draw at Chelsea soon after that trip to Arsenal – because that is what the bench is for.

If you are chasing the game. If the team is tiring. If you want to kill the contest. If the opponents’ changes need counteracting. If you are desperate, as Manchester City were against Queens Park Rangers on May 13, 2012, one substitute in Edin Dzeko equalising in the 92nd minute and another in Mario Balotelli assisting the ‘Aguerooo’ moment in the 94th.

They can go as well as Dzeko and Balotelli, or they can slide towards the Ali Dia end of the scale where that wildcard reveals himself as a joker rather than an ace.

O’Neill recalls bringing on James McClean for the Republic of Ireland in the 75th minute of a Euro 2016 qualifier with Georgia, explicitly telling him to avoid being booked as they defended a 1-0 lead.

McClean was cautioned within 30 seconds, ruling him out of their next game with Germany. ’James is just wholehearted,’ O’Neill says, presumably more forgiving now than he was then.

Now head of the League Managers Association at 72, O’Neill feels there is ‘no exact science’ to it all, saying your ‘gut’ plays a vital part while the game is going on.

One analyst working in the Premier League, who is following Euro 2024 from afar and asked to remain anonymous, recommended that Mail Sport check the distances covered by England and Switzerland in their respective knockout victories and come back to him with a suggestion for who should need their substitutes more in Saturday’s quarter-final.

UEFA’s tracking data tells us England covered 151.5km against Slovakia while Switzerland covered 111km against Italy. Essentially, the English ran a marathon more than the Swiss. ‘The use of subs will be incredibly important,’ the analyst replied on WhatsApp once I’d given him my answer, though he was keen to stress he is an admirer of Gareth Southgate’s.

As with O’Neill, Southgate trusted his ‘gut’ in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday while ours were doing somersaults. He ignored those calling for Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane to be hooked as they struggled against Slovakia. He waited until the 66th minute to introduce Cole Palmer, the 84th for Eberechi Eze and the 94th for Ivan Toney, who Southgate admitted was ‘disgusted’ by the timing of his introduction after being asked to ‘cause chaos’ in the final few seconds.

We know what happened next, yet overlooked amid the celebrations for Bellingham’s equaliser was the response of Kieran Trippier. He pulled Toney away from the huddle to scream in his ear and pummel his chest, encouraging the striker to earn the bonus half hour he had been gifted.

That he did. After a cleared cross by Palmer and wonky effort from Eze, Toney had the presence of mind to head the ball into Kane – Southgate’s three substitutes and the captain he refused to remove combining to send England into the quarter-finals.

It went some way to validating Southgate's hesitating, though there is no escaping the harsh reality that we were one overhead kick from elimination. There have been calls for a more proactive approach, as Bryan Robson told Mail Sport: ‘You have to accept sometimes players don't play well. (Phil) Foden has been poor by his standards, Bukayo Saka too to a degree, so Gareth must make substitutions earlier.’

The average time of England’s first substitute at Euro 2024 has come in the 59th minute – slower than Spain, Portugal, Germany and 10 other nations. Southgate used 11 of his 15 available slots in the group stages – nobody used a lower number. Substitutes for Germany and the Netherlands have contributed five goals or assists, compared to our one when Toney set up Kane.

If and when Southgate exits England, his game-changing capacity will be taken into consideration by potential employers. Yet unlike Ellis at Villa, rarely will they interfere, one Premier League club owner telling Mail Sport this week: ‘It’s the managers' call, not ours. I believe in fresh legs, though not all managers do and it depends on the strength of the bench.’

Southgate is not the biggest fan of the word ‘substitutes’. Just like Eddie Jones, he refers to them as ‘finishers’, though this is only the tip of the iceberg in footballing terminology.

Sammy Lander is football’s first substitution coach, having worked as a consultant with clubs from the National League to the Premier League. Crunching the numbers. Preparing the players. Assessing the who, why, where and when, even taking into account the substitute’s state of mind if he's had an argument with the wife. There is no detail too small worth dissecting.

Speaking to Mail Sport, Lander ran through the alternative terms used by managers, the idea being the substitute benefits from knowing precisely which role he is being brought on to perform.

‘Like “impactor”, “energiser”, “game closer”, “game changer” and so on,’ Lander explains. ‘What that does is it tries to relate the name to what you want from your substitute.

‘For example, a “game closer” might be when you're 3-0 up – game management, keep the ball, win your duels. But a “game changer” might be the complete opposite – take more risks, win corners, bring some energy back into the stadium. 

'Speaking to some managers, they might give the player a little slap on the back and say, “Go win the game”, but that is so open to interpretation. Whereas when you say be an “energiser", the idea is they will specifically know what is wanted from them. 

'The more deliberate you can be with a player – technically, physically and psychologically – then the more potential you can unlock from a substitute.’

How Lander fell into this line of work began when he was a first-team coach at Weymouth. 'We won promotion to the National League so we were on the cusp of the Football League,’ he says. ‘We were going through Covid, a few players got furloughed and our squad got very, very, very thin so they had to start naming me as a substitute. Unbelievable.

‘There was one game in the FA Cup, we were playing Maidstone United and our striker goes down. The gaffer turns to me and says, “Sammy, you're gonna have to come on.”

‘And it was that lightbulb moment where I thought, “Wow, I'm not ready, I haven't moved, I haven't eaten, I haven't stretched,” and I grew a concept from there.’

Lander, who is writing a book called Finishers and created a new metric called ‘Expected Impact’, continues: ‘There are so many specialist coaches in football that I’ve had communications with. Team-talk coaches. Throw-in coaches. In my opinion, substitutions are the next part of the game to be modernised.

'You've got the match day minus two where you're doing the opposition prep, the nutrition, the physical work. Then when it gets to the subs, it’s like, “Do what you can.” You need to look at how you apply that process of a starter to a substitute.

‘There’s still an element of guesswork to it all. When football is a game of such fine margins, you can’t be hoping that something will happen. There needs to be more rationale behind it.’

The award for the craftiest substitution of all time can only go to Andy Hessenthaler, the former player-manager of Gillingham. 

‘It actually made Question of Sport in the “What happened next?” round,’ Hessenthaler tells Mail Sport, laughing as he recalls the ridiculousness of a trip to Cardiff City on September 13, 2003. ‘We were losing 3-0 and I had words with the linesman over a decision. Suddenly, the referee brandishes a red card and sends me to stands.

‘I was walking down the tunnel when all of a sudden, I heard my assistant Richard Hill calling out. “Gaffer, gaffer, why don’t you put yourself on?” I wasn't thinking that at the time. Credit to Rich.

‘I came back up the tunnel and took my tracksuit top off. The linesman is looking, the ref is looking. Cardiff's manager was Lennie Lawrence. Len looked at me, I looked at him, he was laughing, I was laughing. And the crowd. It was then that they registered I was a player-manager. You put your number up, take your top off, that’s it, I’m going on.’

Gillingham went on to lose 5-0. ‘The game didn't get much better for us,’ Hessenthaler adds. ‘With 10 minutes to go, I got booked, so I was sent off as a manager and then yellow carded as a player.’ At least he avoided becoming the first player-manager to be dismissed twice in a game.

Peter Crouch says he felt like a ‘head on a stick’ in his final season at Burnley, all six of his Premier League appearances coming as a late substitute. Crouch’s last-ever game as a professional footballer was as a sub in the 77th minute in a 3-1 defeat by Arsenal.

Unlike Laursen at Villa, that would not even be enough to trigger a player’s appearance bonus in some cases, one intermediary explaining how contracts today can specify they need to be introduced by the 75th minute to qualify. ‘It can be degrading for a footballer when he falls into that category, especially if you're coming on with 60 seconds to spare,’ the agent adds.

Danny Ings surely felt that deflation last season, subbed on 12 times after the 80th minute. West Ham used the fewest substitutes in the Premier League last season (109) and also averaged the latest introduction (64th minute). Ask David Moyes why and he turns defensive, telling Mail Sport previously that his numbers are not dissimilar to Pep Guardiola’s at Manchester City, who used 115 and usually waited until the 59th minute to make a change.

Aside from the differing strengths of their benches, one source at West Ham has a theory as to why their substitutes occasionally struggled to have an impact. ‘If you’re a possession-based side like City, it’s easier for a sub to come in because you’re in control of the game,’ he says. ‘Whereas if you’re not that type of team, that player might not touch the ball for six minutes and then his first action is a counter-attack at high speed. The success rate is lower.’

Southgate knows the eyes of England will be scrutinising his every move in Dusseldorf this Saturday. That is nothing new for managers. They are used to being surrounded by tens of thousands of critics, all of them presuming they know better than that bloke in the technical area. 

Cave to their cries for a change and you sacrifice the chance to prove them wrong, as Southgate did against Slovakia. As O’Neill says at the end of our conversation: ‘Nobody knows anything. That’s what William Goldman said.’