In case you missed it this weekend, a super sub just swung the Premier League's title race.
In his first seven domestic seasons at Liverpool, Roberto Firmino scored five goals off the bench. This season alone, he has scored three. In fact, his past two goals both came as a sub: the capper in the 7-0 win against Manchester United, and the equalizer in Sunday's wild 2-2 draw with Arsenal.
Prior to Firmino's 87th minute goal at Anfield, Arsenal had a 62% chance to win the Premier League, per FiveThirtyEight. Once he scored, though, their probability of a league title plummeted all the way down to 42%. Put another way, Manchester City's likelihood of a third-straight league title jumped from 38% to 58% once Firmino cushioned in that back-post header.
For his last season with the club, Firmino's performance in a more limited role has been one of the few bright spots in a mostly depressing season for Liverpool. He has played 221 minutes off the bench -- more than he ever has -- and is averaging 1.04 non-penalty goals plus assists per 90 minutes, which would easily be a career-best mark and currently ranks second in the Premier League behind only Erling Haaland.
More minutes on the bench has made Firmino more productive, and it hasn't prevented him from doing what he does best: scoring against Arsenal. He nabbed his other sub goal at the Emirates earlier this year, and now he's up to 11 total goals against the Gunners. Only Harry Kane (14) and Wayne Rooney (12) have scored more in the Premier League era.
Despite that, Firmino isn't the best super sub. Across Europe's Big Five leagues, 267 players have featured in more minutes off the bench. He doesn't have the most goals among subs, and he doesn't even have any assists. As we enter the stretch run of the season -- as the games and injuries continue to pile up -- every team's depth is going to be tested. So who are Europe's key 12th men?
Your favorite sub's favorite sub
Across Europe's Big Five leagues, 450 different players have played at least two full games off the bench, or 180 minutes. Three full games: 135. Four full games: 32. Five full games: just six.
Japan forward Ado Onaiwu has played 454 minutes off the bench for Toulouse, who are 12th and in the midst of an impressive first season in Ligue 1. Then there's 23-year-old North Macedonia attacking midfielder Eljif Elmas, who has been one of the key depth pieces (456 minutes) behind Napoli's incredible run across multiple competitions.
Albania forward Nedim Bajrami has played a combined 460 sub minutes for Sassuolo and Empoli in Serie A. Former Barcelona and Chelsea forward Pedro, now 35 years old, is hanging on with 462 minutes off the bench for second-place Lazio in Serie A. And Argentine forward Ezequiel Ponce has played 476 sub minutes for last-place Elche in LaLiga.
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However, there's only one player who has made six full games' worth of sub appearances this season, and it's everyone's favorite baby-oil-covered beefcake: Wolves winger Adama Traore.
Traore's direct, determined dribbling ability has tantalized just about everyone over the past few years. A player who can plow through space like that? There had to be a way to deploy his singular skill. He can't really shoot and he can't really pass, but when you can make Premier League defenders look like eighth-graders attempting to tackle NFL running back Derrick Henry, maybe you don't even really need to pass or shoot, or even do anything else all that well.
If you could find the right role or surround him with the right players, there had to be a way to leverage Adama's dribbling ability into something that helps you win games ... right? And maybe that simply meant he needed to come off the bench.
Various studies have found that attacking subs produce goals at a much higher rate than attacking starters, through some combination of facing tired legs and frequently entering matches in which their teams are incentivized to attack. Perhaps with the open spaces that start to crop up as the game stretches on and the ability to run at fatigued defenders, Traore would become a destructive, goal-creating force.
Unfortunately, that just hasn't happened. He's still as dominant of a dribbler as there is. Across all wingers Europe, per the site FBref, he's in the 99th percentile for successful take-ons and the 97th percentile for progressive carries.
But as you can see from that image, most of the carries are straight-line runs into wide areas that really limit your options to either crossing the ball in against a set defense or just stepping on the ball and passing it backward. As such, Adama has one goal and one assist off the bench for Wolves, which averages out to an unremarkable 0.33 goals plus assists per 90 minutes. At age 27, this might just be who he is.
Your favorite team's soon-to-be-favorite super sub
We're not talking enough about Lyon's Rayan Cherki, you guys. Don't know him? He's 19 years old, and among attacking midfielders and wingers across Europe, he ranks in the 90th percentile or above for, well, just about everything:
Expected Assists (xA)
Shot-creating actions
Progressive passes
Progressive carries
Successful take-ons
Touches in the attacking penalty area
Progressive passes received
The site FBref compares players at the same positions across 19 different statistics and then creates a "similar players" profile. The 10 players with the most similar profiles to Cherki, in order:
1) Ousmane Dembele, Barcelona
3) Neymar, PSG
6) Riyad Mahrez, Manchester City
7) Leroy Sane, Bayern Munich
8) Jack Grealish, Manchester City
Now, this isn't some kind of projection-based model. These aren't players who looked similar to Cherki when they were 19. No, these are players who appear statistically similar to a 19-year-old Cherki right now. He's already generating comparisons to some of the best players in the world, and chances are he's going to get better from there.
Cherki made his Ligue 1 debut for Lyon at 15 years old, when he wouldn't have been old enough to play varsity on my high school team. Since then, the club have very carefully managed his minutes load. He made one start and played 143 minutes that first season. He then made eight starts and featured in 1,138 minutes over the past two seasons combined. This year, he's already up to 14 starts and 1,282 total minutes.
However, Cherki's appearances have been almost evenly divided between those 14 starts and 13 sub appearances. And among all subs in Europe this season, he has created the most xA and completed the most passes into the penalty area:
What makes his sub production so interesting is that he's still probably not ready to be a full-time starter for one of the best teams in the world, but he's also already way too good to be acquired for anything less than only the best teams in the world can afford. Whoever signs him can feel pretty confident that he'll be able to produce off the bench or in the starting XI.
Cherki is the most exciting young player in the world; imagine a fearless world-class dribbler and world-class passer constantly driving the ball at defenders and almost always making the right decision. That's where he might be headed and I can't wait to see what's next.
Your favorite player who probably should be a super sub
This might be it for Tottenham forward Son Heung-min. Here's how his previous six Premier League seasons compare, by non-penalty xG and xA per 90 minutes:
After a career year at age 29, he's entered his 30s and is having his worst season in a long time. For attackers, this is usually what happens right around when they hit this age: they get worse. On top of his decline in shots taken and created, he also just hasn't been the elite finisher of seasons past. Over the previous five seasons, he scored 23.5 goals more than expected. This year, he's roughly in line with his xG total.
What you're left with is a player with fewer than 0.5 goals plus assists per 90 minutes, which is a rough baseline for an attacker on a Champions League team. On top of that, Son isn't really doing much else beyond taking shots and creating them for teammates. He's not progressing the ball, he's not receiving progressive passes and he's not doing much defending.
Michael Imburgio's DAVIES model -- which tries to take into account the value of everything a player does on the ball -- says Son has added around 2.8 goals of value compared to the average player. That'd rank 44th in the Premier League, a ranking that is somewhat inflated by his relatively large minutes share.
But what if ... he moved to the bench? With fewer minutes, Son's lack of in-possession contribution wouldn't hurt Tottenham as much, while the sub effects we already went over would probably help stave off his declining per-minute production.
Being able to move Son into that role, of course, depends on who else Tottenham has on the team, and their other non-Harry Kane attackers, Richarlison and Dejan Kulusevski, have been equally disappointing this season. That said, Son has made three sub appearances, played about 60 minutes and scored four goals. He has played more than 2,000 starter minutes ... and scored three goals. That's a super small sample size, but there might be at least a tiny bit of signal in there.
It's working for Firmino, isn't it?
The super-est subs
Udinese's Lazar Samardzic is one these new kinds of hybrid winger-midfielders who get involved with a bunch of shots in and around the box, drive the ball forward with their feet, and receive passes in between the defensive and midfield lines. They just don't defend much and either frequently lose the ball because they're always attempting higher-degree-of-difficulty passes, or they just don't pass much at all.
It's a unique player type that requires a specific blend of players around it. (Former Tottenham and Newcastle player Moussa Sissoko is one of the first of these guys I can remember.) They only really work on a top team when they're players like Martin Odegaard and Nicolo Barella, whose passing proficiency makes up for how often they lose the ball.
One other way to make these kinds of players work: bring them off the bench! That's what Udinese have done with Samardzic. And among all subs in Europe, the 21-year-old Serbian is top in the number of uninterrupted possessions he started that ultimately led to shots, and he also tops the list for the number of uninterrupted possessions he has been involved in that lead to shots. For good or bad, everything he does is directed toward the opposition goal. He's also the rare sub who will frequently take free kicks. Keep an eye out for him.
Samardzic also ranks second among all subs in the number of uninterrupted possessions he has been involved in that have led to goals, with eight. The only player with more: 25-year-old Nantes forward Mostafa Mohamed. The Egyptian has been involved in nine possessions that have led to goals, and he has scored five of them -- more than any other sub so far this season.
More importantly, Mohamed is not only his team's overall leading scorer with seven non-penalty goals, but his sub goals alone would still be tied for the team lead. Nantes are five points clear of the relegation zone. Without Mohamed's magic off the bench, they might not even be in Ligue 1 next year.