Re-Introducing the Five-Subs Rule Is Not the Solution Football Needs
When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer brought on five substitutes against Sheffield United on June 24, the Norwegian made Premier League history. This was the first quintuple change ever in English league football history. Normally the sight of so many players getting ready to come on would be reserved for a pre-season friendly.
In those circumstances you might even see a whole starting XI come off at the same time, but that is for the purposes of getting players minutes in a bid to bring players back to fitness and there is nothing on the line between the two teams.
This happened in a Premier League game due to the extenuating circumstances of lock-down football. During Project Restart, the rules were adjusted to allow for an extra two substitutes during the three phases of play that allow for changes to the team.
This meant that teams couldn’t waste time making five individual swaps but could still allow greater flexibility in getting the players back up to speed following a lack of match fitness.
When the season ended the league’s 20 members twice voted against the continued use of this rule going into the next campaign. They were the only major European league not to keep this rule, and even the two major European cup competitions maintained the five-subs.
The vote was split 11–9 in favour, but it required 14 votes to pass. Among those in favour were of course the Big Six clubs: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
Capturing the mood at the time, the news article written for this announcement on Joe.co.uk explained the reaction from the football world to this reversion back to the old rule.
“The idea of continuing the five subs rule came under a lot of scrutiny in recent weeks from high profile figures in football and fans as well, with many highlighting that bigger, richer clubs with deeper squads were likely to benefit from the rule change more than those in the bottom half of the table with less quality on the bench,” wrote Rueben Pinder.
The evidence was there that it favoured big clubs. The biggest example of this was during the Champions League quarter final between Atalanta and Paris Saint-Germain.
The Italian club were leading 1–0 until the dying moments when Marquinhos and Eric Choupo-Moting both scored in injury time to turn the game around. Choupo-Moting was PSG’s fifth substitute on the night and would not have been on the pitch to score the winner but for the unusual circumstances.
Even the fourth substitute that night was Sergio Rico coming on to replace Keylor Navas in goal. The extra two subs allowed PSG to keep a fit keeper on the pitch and ten outfield players, whereas in normal circumstances PSG would’ve had to sacrifice one of those options.
If this rule hadn’t been in place then maybe Atalanta might have played in their first ever European Cup semi final, and a rare underdog win in Europe’s biggest and most prestigious cup competition.
But with the current season’s intense schedule we are now seeing the impact of teams playing so many games together. The Manchester City versus Liverpool match on Sunday was potentially ruined by fatigue. On 60 minutes, Trent Alexander-Arnold went off injured and is now expected to miss up to four weeks of action.
The following 30 minutes saw very little action as both teams stopped playing to the same intensity that made the first half so exciting.
The Athletic reported on October 23 that, up to that stage in the season, there had been 78 muscle injuries which was a 42% increase on the previous campaign. At the time of writing there were five clubs with up to seven injuries in their squad and Everton even had eight missing. Everton’s early good form has eroded since missing so many key players.
Following the 1–1 draw on Sunday, both Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp spoke out about wanting the five-subs rule to return.
“We speak about how we have to fight again and again about five substitutions,” said Guardiola post-match.
“All around the world there is five substitutions. Here we believe we are a special league with just three players, we don’t protect the players.
“Look at Trent Alexander-Arnold, an international English player, he is injured. That’s why it is a disaster.
“With this calendar which comes from a special year before, I will demand, if the people allow my voice, five substitutions have to come back for the players, the managers, everyone to do it. If not, it’s difficult to sustain it.”
Klopp even went so far as to call out the Premier League CEO Richard Masters for a “lack of leadership” over the issue. “It’s not an advantage, it’s a necessity,” added the German.
However, both managers know the rule and both have an extensive squad specifically for the reason that they need to rotate players. It is part of their job to keep players rested during times of intense scheduling.
This was something Sir Alex Ferguson perfected during the 1998/99 season — a campaign that saw them compete 62 times overall, including a 33-game unbeaten run over the course of 21 weeks from December 26 to May 26, a run of a game every 4.5 days.
Good squad management is as useful a skill in management as any other. Meanwhile Klopp played Alexander-Arnold seven times in 23 days before he went off injured on Sunday. Was it really necessary for him to play 90 minutes in every match since the last international break, save for nine minutes he missed at the end of a 5–0 Champions League win against Atalanta?
Indeed, across those seven games, Andrew Robertson also played 604 minutes out of 630 available. Would having a fourth and fifth substitute have stopped Klopp from starting his two full backs in every league game so far this season?
The Professional Footballers Association has spoken out on the Premier League’s lack of extra substitutes, following a consultation with FIFPro — the sport’s largest representative of the players with over 65,000 members.
“It was peculiar that the Premier League did not allow five substitutions,” Vincent Gouttebarge, Fifpro’s chief medical officer, told the Guardian.
“By contrast, it is allowed in all the other major leagues in Europe and in the Champions League and Europa League, and it is obviously one of our recommendations.
“It would be nice to have the same everywhere because it provides the manager with an opportunity to rest some of his players and perhaps manage workload better.
“The Premier League is one of the most affected because it is the top league in the world and it attracts elite players who are also playing international football.”
Maybe the players should be knocking on their bosses’ doors and asking questions about their extensive playing minutes. Liverpool even specifically signed Konstantinos Tsimikas from Olympiacos for the purpose of alleviating the pressure off Robertson to play every game. It is poor management not to adjust the starting XI for such an intense schedule.
Perhaps managers should also be looking at the international break for their biggest issues. The three or four weeks taken up of playing eight additional matches between September and November is both needless and reckless.
There are no guarantees the European Championships will even go ahead as planned next Summer, and the Nations League does not command the importance that player welfare should be threatened for.
Similarly, the League Cup was an unwanted distraction during this intense schedule. Why should the rules of the game be bent even more in favour of the big sides when there are other alternative and more practical solutions to the problem?
The change to five substitutes worked during Project Restart simply because the players had not played in six months so needed any advantages they could receive in getting back up to match fitness.
But Solskjaer should remain an unlikely answer in the pub quiz question, who is the only Premier League manager to make a quintuple change during a match. The failure of football’s governing bodies to put player welfare over greed should not impact the rules of the game, they’re already unbalanced enough as it is.
