By BBC Sport has ranked the Premier League’s all-time greatest super subs, and the top 10 is a celebration of the game-changers who decided matches from the bench. To make the cut, players had to deliver consistently across their careers, not just in one hot streak — with Mikel Arteta’s preferred term “finishers” given a firm nod and then ignored.
The honorable mentions alone tell you how high the bar is. One-season wonder Adam le Fondre holds the record for the most goals off the bench in a single Premier League campaign, with five of his eight coming in a three-game spell in January 2013. Hernan Crespo boasts the best goals-per-game ratio of any substitute, but his six goals in 16 appearances for Chelsea is deemed too small a sample, while Mark Robins’ five in 14 outings falls into the same category.
The Assist Kings
Theo Walcott may hold the unwanted record as the most substituted player in Premier League history — 168 times — but it is his impact coming the other way that lands him here. The England flyer pieced together the competition’s most productive substitute CV: nobody has more than his 14 assists off the bench (Ryan Giggs and Marc Albrighton are level), and he added 10 goals as a replacement across his time with Arsenal, Everton and Southampton, putting him fourth on the all-time list for overall goal contributions.
This was a toss-up between Victor Anichebe and Divock Origi, with both forwards scoring exactly half of their Premier League goals as a substitute. Anichebe edges it: his 13 substitute strikes for Everton, West Brom and Sunderland place the former Nigeria international joint-eighth on the all-time list, and his 50% share is the joint-highest for any player to have scored at least 20 times in the competition. He chipped in five assists for good measure.
The Finishing Specialists
There is a good case for Danny Welbeck, the only current player in the top three with 19 substitute goals, 12 of them coming during six years with Brighton after spells as a goalscoring sub at Manchester United and Arsenal. Now at Chelsea, the 35-year-old still has time to climb.
Daniel Sturridge has two fewer substitute goals than Welbeck, but a higher percentage of his overall tally came off the bench — 22% of his 76 Premier League goals. Add seven assists and his 24 goal contributions came at a more prolific rate than every substitute in Premier League history, bar only Edin Dzeko and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Then there is Olivier Giroud, a World Cup and Champions League winner whose 21 goals off the bench — almost a quarter of his 90 top-flight strikes — put him second on the all-time substitute scoring list. Only Dzeko, Solskjaer and Javier Hernandez boast a better minutes-per-goal record as a sub.
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Source: BBC Sport — read the full story there.
