London is Blue Dispatch #036

The list of complaints against Mauricio Pochettino’s (game) management stretches a foot long, and how could you mention footlong and not talk about subs? The 2^nd half against Newcastle turned into a high-voltage slugfest, and as the hour mark crept by, the Argentinian held back on his subs. When Dan Burn hobbled off in the 69^th minute, Poch sensed his moment. 2 minutes later, Mykhailo Mudryk came on. Four minutes later, Chelsea went 3-1 up, thanks to the Ukrainian slaloming through the Toon defence.

Old habits, however, die hard. Nicolas Jackson, who had opened the scoring on the night, was clearly running on empty. Cole Palmer, the scorer of the second, was slowing down too. Conor Gallagher, back from a virus, was given the exhausting task of playing wide out-of-possession. The side’s only available right back, Malo Gusto, who has had persistent injury issues, still bombed up and down the right flank. Newcastle made their subs, and the Geordies went ham as the Londoners chose cold turkey.

Newcastle’s 2^nd goal was the 15^th conceded in the Premier League by Chelsea after the 76^th minute. Manchester City have conceded half that tally; Arsenal one-third of it, with just five. Pochettino’s 2^nd sub came in the 86^th minute. The 3^rd and last of an available five, came in the 91^st, two minutes after Newcastle clawed it back to 3-2.

And so we return to the oft-broached questions - is Pochettino guilty of misusing his substitutions? Is our consistent collapse in the last 15 minutes down to concentration issues caused by physical and mental exhaustion? The latter is hard to answer without data, but for now, let’s take a look at how Poch’s changes and their patterns have looked like over the past seven matches, a sample size covering all our PL games in 2024.

The Timing

Below is a table that charts the timing and game state in which Poch has made his changes in the 2^nd half. The figures reveal a few interesting things of note.

Let us sum up what we can deduce from the above tables.

1) Poch has made a fair amount of changes. Out of a possible 35 subs, he has made 26 (3.7 per game). Three of them were injury-enforced. Based on January data courtesy The Athletic, Pep made 2.8 subs a game (2^nd lowest) while Liverpool made 4.3 (6^th highest.)

2) The thrashings against Wolves and Liverpool, where the side was down by two for quite some time (for 61 mins vs Liverpool, 37 vs Wolves), were the only two games where he used all five subs. Nine of those ten subs came with the side trailing by two or more goals.

3) In 7 games, Poch has made only one non-injury substitute when the game has been in the balance. He makes the most changes when his side is up by one goal (9/26).

4) All four of Poch’s early changes (from half-time to the hour mark) were made at half-time, with Chelsea trailing.

5) The side have had an average of nearly seven-and-a-half injuries through this seven-game run.

Injuries, Inexperience and Pressure

That last point is pertinent in trying to decipher Poch’s approach to substitutions. Here are all the options that have made the bench over these seven games and how many times they’ve come on.

Here’s a lowdown of the table above:

1) Chelsea have had a staggering 21 different players on their bench since the start of the year.

2) Eight of these players are 20 or under, with only Gusto and Gilchrist featuring off the bench. The rest haven’t featured for a single minute.

3) 15 of the 26 changes have involved attackers. Out of the 15 changes only four have yielded a goal or assist (Mudryk 1G 1A, Nkunku 1G, Carney 1A.)

4) Cesare Casadei has been the only one midfielder out of the 21 to make it off the bench, despite Enzo, Caicedo and Gallagher completing at least 420 minutes of the last 450 in the league. Enzo and Caicedo also played the full 120 in the Carabao Cup final.

Replenish and Reinforce

Earlier this season, during a game vs Newcastle, a City fan spent a half shouting at Guardiola, urging him to make changes. At one point, Pep turned around and snapped back, asking the fan to come take his place and make a few. Pep eventually made no changes, and City took the three points. A torrid season where hating on an ex-Spurs manager has seemed like the easiest course of catharsis, the insults have come first; the questions (if any), after. Poch is not Pep, which is true. He also rotates his side quite often (by choice), while Poch has had to do it because of circumstance.

The upsides of making fewer changes have been plenty. The prolonged absences of Romeo Lavia and Lesley Ugochukwu have allowed Enzo and Caicedo to deepen their nascent understanding as a pivot. With the squad lacking a competing second striker, Nicolas Jackson has built up steady game time, inching closer to the coveted double-digit goal mark in the league in his debut season.

The downsides are plenty too. Key players like those mentioned above and the likes of Malo Gusto inch closer to the red zone with every passing game. Poch’s reluctance to innovate, adapt and overcome is almost certainly costing his side a chance to breathe in the middle of a suffocating season.

A high intensity style of play with heavy emphasis on transitions has also taken a toll in latter stages of games, with catastrophic individual errors featuring aplenty (three of them leading to Newcastle’s first and Cucurella’s panic leading to the second.) There is rationale in Poch’s thinking and decisions about changes, but just like his young squad, there is room to grow for both. In the end, it is the little changes that usually make a big difference, and no clean sheets in the last nine games perhaps merits a change in approach.