On a Tuesday night in September, the half-time
whistle has just blown in Wimbledon’s game with Portsmouth in the Papa John’s Trophy.
As Portsmouth’s seven substitutes head down the tunnel,
Wimbledon’s seven subs sprint over to the far side of the pitch. Immediately,
running and passing drills begin. They are overseen by a new coach called Sammy Lander.
Bu who is he?
Lander is football’s first known specialist substitutes’ coach.
For the next 15 minutes, the Wimbledon players are involved in collective and individual training at
high intensity. It is 11 and a half minutes before Portsmouth’s substitutes re-emerge,
and when they do it is to go through familiar, listless routines.
It is 2-2 when Wimbledon head coach Mark Robinson sends on his first sub, Henry Lawrence.
It is the 57th minute. In minute 70,
two more home replacements are introduced, Jack Rudoni and Luke McCormick.
By the end of the game, Lawrence will have won a penalty, which is converted,
and McCormick has also scored to make a breathless game 5-3.
Later, Lander will put the contributions of those subs into a chart on his laptop.
It tracks goals and assists from players who didn’t start games
across League One and, a month into the season, Wimbeldon are top by some way.
Wimbledon have employed Lander on a part-time trial basis since the beginning of the season.
He is only 25, has never played football professionally
and is blind in his right eye from a serious car crash when he was a boy.
“We call them ‘finishers’, not substitutes” he says.
“My job is to make sure players are as prepared as possible to go on and
impact the game in all ways — physically, mentally, socially, technically, tactically.
“It’s about making players who hear they’re not starting say, ‘OK, I’m going to come on
and bring energy, drive’. That’s so important. It’s about treating a substitute as a starter.
It helps that head-coach Mark Robinson is a 55-year-old open to innovation.
“It isn’t about wanting to be different. I’ve been a sub feeling sorry for myself.
Sammy broke it down mentally — the player is not a ‘sub’, he’s a finisher. He has specific warm-ups.
It’s a way of thinking which, for Lander, began at Weymouth during COVID-19. He had been coaching
and doing some analysis for four years when he suddenly found himself on the subs bench himself.
“we’d furloughed a few players and we had injuries”, he told The Athletic,
“I was a coach, and before one game we had another player call in to say he had COVID.”
And despite his lack of playing credentials, Lander found his way onto the pitch.
“It gets to the 89th minute, our striker goes down. The gaffer turned to me and said,
‘Are you ready to go on?’ And I said, ‘No, nowhere near ready’.
And that experience was informative. Today, Lander has a particular way of looking at
the area and it begins with making sure the players are as prepared as possible to go on.
I have a chart here showing ‘Impact time’ — the period it
takes for a player to impact a game. He explains further:
“This came from Weymouth when a player was sent on late at 0-0
and it finished 0-0. He came off and said to me that he didn’t do anything.
I said, ‘Well, you’ve had seven minutes! You’ve not really touched a ball, or warmed up properly’.
It made me think. So now if we’re 0-0, we can say, ‘This player needs 20 minutes to impact a game’.
“Half-time becomes crucial — you have 15 minutes of uninterrupted ball-time on a pitch.
The subs stay out with me, get touches of the ball, can practice diagonals. They enjoy it.
“Lots of players’ warm-ups aren’t that good compared to the starters — their warm-up
is intense. For some reason, there’s not that perception with subs. But when players come on,
they have to run, sprint, get to high speeds and that comes from being warm. Sometimes,
we’ll look at players and say, ‘He’s not warmed up properly’,
and the GPS stats will confirm that. The GPS can monitor the warm-up.”
Encouragingly, he says he has not met resistance any player,
but every new idea encounters some hesitation.
“If I’m being completely honest, remembers Wimbledon assistant Rob Tuvey,
“I’m thinking, ‘Substitutes coach? How does that work?’ It takes you back a little bit.”
But Tuvey as quick won around.
“we met with Sammy, he did a presentation, and it just made sense. The stats he showed us from
last season told us we could make marginal gains from it. And in sport, you have to look at that.
“What Sammy has done is give demotivated players a purpose, so they remain connected with the game.”