Financial analysis for investors, providing strategic and practical recommendations, for exit preparation and value creation advice, by day, Tom Hayward recently finished an apprenticeship gaining industry experience and achieved his BSc (Hons) in Digital and Technology Solutions (Data) through an apprenticeship with Multiverse, recently completed in March!

In his spare time, Tom is one of the younger members of a generations long family of Bees fans and he likes to take a look at the stats behind the performances! Someones they might agree with what we write on social media, but not always.

After a stunning season, Tom wondered what the season looked like taking our approach to substitutes into consideration.

Here are some of Tom’s findings:

After 38 games, Brentford made an average of 3.6 substitutions per game
Average number of substitutions per game, PL 25/26

This ranks Brentford 18th in the 25/26 season, with only West Ham and Everton making fewer average subs.

This could be for several reasons:

(i) coaching staff are happy with the way the team are playing, and/or think a substitute could break momentum/style of play;
(ii) coaching do not have confidence in the bench or believe the strength in depth of the bench is not big enough to make meaningful impact

Average number of substitutions per game against league position, PL 25/26

There is little to no relationship between the number of substitutions made and final league position, but this is expected given the complexity and chance of football. One school of thought for a lower number of subs could be that the coaching staff are focused around making the right substitutions at the right time in the right game, as opposed to making substitutions for the sake of it or because we are chasing a game. Average number of substitutions really did vary between teams this season. For example, Spurs, Burnley, and Wolves (who were all towards the bottom of the table) seemed to make an above average number of substitutions (albeit Wolves only slightly above the average), compared to West Ham, who only made an average of 3.5 substitutes per game

Brentford rank 16th in terms of average minutes a substitute makes
Average minutes a substitute gets per club, PL 25/26

This indicates subs are typically made later in the game compared to other PL teams.

Number of substitute appearances and average minutes played by Brentford player, PL 25/26

The top 3 highest sub appearance makers are all traditionally full-backs
However, Keane Lewis-Potter and Aaron Hickey have played in different positions.

Notably, winger and defensive midfielder respectively, with the former being a new observation towards the end of the season evident at Palace (H) and Liverpool (A).

Of those with more than four substitute appearance, Fabio Carvalho was typically brought on much later in the game (i.e. the dying minutes) – should he have been given more of a chance earlier on in the season pre-injury?

Outside of Fabio, Aaron Hickey had the fewest average minutes per game, most likely due to his position and recovery from injury

Unsurprisingly, Hákon Valdimarsson had the most number of games as an unused substitute
Unused Brentford substitutes, PL 25/26

Interestingly, three of the top five highest number of games as an unused substitute were attackers (1).

Fan sentiment was frustration at the lack of off-the-bench appearances Romelle Donovan made, with some voicing concerns around Keith Andrews picking Reiss Nelson over Donovan, given the latter is younger, not a loan signing, and considered more exciting by the fan base. Both Donovan and Kaye Furo are both 19 years old – is Keith slowly integrating them into the team/first-team PL football, or does Keith not yet have complete confidence in their ability to impact positively, a game?

Tom is an enthusiastic football data, amateur analyst!
Tom explains that the above is comprised from public data freely available from FBREF.
FBREF is an amazing Football stats & history database with publicly available football data – and much more!
The integrity of the content cannot be guaranteed.

Professional sports data analysts have access to deeper paywall data. 

Come you Bees as we’re awaiting euro 2026 2027!

Tom Hayward
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The above article link is wIth acknowledgement and thanks to Armstrong Transaction Services Limited.