By Louis Nixon

Nuno Espirito Santo has received monumental amounts of criticism regarding his substitutions against Aston Villa, which was proven again to some, but not all. 

Across the game against Aston Villa, four changes had been made by the end of the game, so it wasn’t necessarily the amount of changes that were made that became an issue, but it’s more that the timing of substitutions has been underwhelming and more often than not they’ve either been too late which means we’ve not been able to spark a comeback, or they’ve not been implemented early enough which has cost us the game. 

Against Aston Villa, substitutions had been sparked through Villa scoring a third, which triggered Wilson to come on, and three others in the 89th minute to try and rescue a point, but unfortunately, that couldn’t come together. 

One of the issues that is happening here is that we had been playing relatively well at 2-2 and had just had an array of chances; unfortunately, Villa would get one or two, and they’d make us pay for our misses.

The squad was playing well… but that doesn’t mean changes can’t happen! Individuals such as Paqueta and Summerville should’ve been dragged off a lot sooner than they were, and if a change or two had been made, anything could’ve happened, but hindsight is a wonderful thing! 

It’s extremely easy to say that Nuno should’ve done this or that, but in the moment of the situation, it’s difficult, and Nuno’s not been able to predict that consistency.

For example, against Bournemouth he was criticised for brigning off Wilson too early which caused a distruption in the team and we struggled, but against Aston Villa we had a gelled squad, but the legs would prove to be too tired to complete… the situation is totally different in both games and it’s unpredictable which way it’ll go due to the calibre of players that we have. 

Whilst on the face of it, it appears that Nuno is persistently making the incorrect decisions, it’s also that it’s difficult to understand the perspective of how the game is going and when to interrupt the flow of play with a substitute, given that we have very few like-for-like subs.