Can Liverpool Accommodate Ekitike and Isak? Arne Slot's Use of Subs

Liverpool are not used to spending (up to) £79m on a second choice player. Will Hugo Ekitike get enough minutes if the Reds sign Alexander Isak?

Liverpool have always maximised the use of their resources in their most successful seasons under Fenway Sports Group. Signing Hugo Ekitike for a fee potentially hitting £79m may buck that trend if Alexander Isak joins for what will almost-certainly be a new British transfer record.

Look at Arne Slot’s first year in charge. Seven of the Reds’ top eight earners made at least 28 league starts. Bournemouth prised that level of inclusion from six of their best paid octet, no other club in the Premier League got that out of more than four of their leading eight salary men.

Regular accuracy disclaimer notwithstanding, Ekitike currently sits third in the Liverpool pay scale. He won’t be starting all-but-10 matches of the Reds’ league programme if they sign Isak. It has been suggested (including by Slot) that the Frenchman could be an option on the left; he’s played four club games there in his entire career, one of which was in a Danish Superliga relegation play-off.

It doesn’t mean Ekitike can’t play out wide, but it would represent another significant shift within a Liverpool team that risks being weighed down by their personnel changes this season. As an aside, his one-time potential U-21 coach at international level - you know him as Thierry Henry - weighed in on this debate earlier this week:

A far likelier way Ekitike will work his way onto the pitch in the Isak era will be to deputise for a player who has had his share of injury problems in the past. The boss is expected to use greater rotation this season than he did in year one.

In fairness to the Swede, his proportion of Premier League minutes played for Newcastle has risen from 44.5 through 65.9 to 80.6 per cent with each passing season. He will need protecting, nonetheless.

This will be done in-game as well as by leaving Isak on the bench. Slot’s substitution policy ensured that his centre-forwards did not complete many full games last season. Diogo Jota (four) and Darwin Núñez (six) did this just 10 times between them.

Thinking back, Slot’s strategy with his substitutions feels standardised; forwards replacing forwards, a full-back on for a full-back, that sort of thing.

Yet although such moves occurred fairly often, the Liverpool head coach deployed 104 different combinations of duos when making an in-game change. It may not be as straightforward as assuming Ekitike will come on for Isak whenever he starts.

Writing about substitutes always brings pause for thought, as that was the subject of the first football article I ever produced. Rafa Benitez was being criticised by Andy Gray and Richard Keys for appearing to routinely make his first line-up switch after 65 minutes.

The 2000s were a weird time for football discourse; aren’t they always?

It turned out Benitez did indeed start changing his team at around that point in matches, it’s just that most managers against Liverpool did too. Slot’s average time for his first change last season if we disregard injury-enforced substitutions before the break? The 65th minute.

More important than the timing is the effectiveness. Even if correlation and causation seldom sync up, the Reds scored within five minutes of a change in almost a third of their matches.

Harvey Elliott came off the bench to immediately net a winner in Paris, Kostas Tsimikas and Jota combined for an equaliser at Nottingham Forest while substitutes Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones set up goals to draw matches level against Newcastle and Brighton respectively. How’s that for impact?

The City Ground example was the ultimate in double substitutions. There were only five matches in which Slot didn’t bring on at least two players at once, just one in the Premier League (against Everton at Anfield). It feels negligible not to do this given there are only three opportunities in the second half to make a change.

There were more matches in which the Dutchman unleashed a triple substitution than didn’t roll at least a double. Most of them are easy enough to explain with the data alone, as they occurred after a game was deemed definitively won or in need of rescuing at the other extreme.

The infamous defeat to Forest was the shining example of the latter. Slot made a three-man change with half an hour to go at 0-0, then switched two more players three minutes after going behind. All for nought, alas, beyond proving he will act decisively when required.

That match also displayed other traits of Slot’s thinking with substitutions. Núñez, Gakpo and Robertson coming on for Jota, Luis Diáz and Tsimikas respectively were like-for-like changes which were among his most used, as we shall see.

Conor Bradley for Alexis Mac Allister or Jones replacing Ibrahima Konaté will have been rather less expected. That would have been the case for Kopites, Forest, maybe even the players themselves.

Jones swapped bench for pitch at the expense of Ibou in an even bigger match with Liverpool in a deeper hole. Slot unleashed this potentially puzzling change at 2-0 down in the Carabao Cup final, with it making negligible (at best) difference to the Reds performance once again.

Ekitike need not concern himself with this line of thinking outside the box. If he’s looking for minutes when benched for Isak, Liverpool’s most used substitutions last season should give him hope.

It isn’t just the frequency but the length. Never mind the girth, feel the quality. The average time of a switch involving Jota and Núñez was the 63rd minute, earlier than for any of the pairings on the above chart.

They only move to the 65th if we ignore their one first half swap. We have to go down to a change which only occurred four times - Elliott on for Jones - to find one which occurred longer before full time on average.

The first substitution Slot ever made in England showed the importance he places on in-game changes. He hooked Jarell Quansah for Konaté at half time at Portman Road, with a line perhaps linking that moment directly to the youngster’s departure this summer.

Ekitike needn’t worry about such a fate, he should instead take heart from how his new manager deployed the Darwin and Diogo show. Assuming Isak signs, a lot of his playing time may rest on this strategy continuing.