Last week football league clubs voted to reduce the number of subs that can be named.
At an EGM held at leicester City's newly named King Power Stadium, football league clubs voted to limit the number of substitutes that can be named down from 7 to 5, this will affect games in the Championship, & Leagues 1 & 2, as well as the Johnstones Paint Trophy. For games in the FA & Carling cups as well as the premiership clubs will still be able to name 7 subs as before.
Quite why this ruling has been introduced im unsure, certainly it seems to benefit most those clubs, probably mainly in the lower divisions who do not have big squads, the rumour that it was Pompey who proposed it and were initially asking for a club to only be able to name 3 subs but 4 owners per game is totally unsubstanciated.
The clubs this will mainly affect are those, like Saints with big squads, up till now we haave been able to effectively name two players in each part of the field ie defence, midfield, attack plus a goalkeeper, now thats going to really limit it to one per area, plus one depending whether you are home or away affecting whether he is a defensive or attacking player.
One other affect of the ruling is that tams with big squads might elect not to name a sub keeper on the bench, in truth its a luxury that is rarely used, indeed since we have been out of the Premiership I think its happened about twice that I can remember, if a club has a player that could fill in in goal in an emergency they might opt to forego the keeper on the bench.
In certain respects it doesnt change much, you can still use only three out of the five, what it really does it eliminate managers safety nets, up till now a manager had a lot to choose from, he could be reactive to situations as they happened, now the manager will have to be pro active, his choices on the bench could influence a game a lot more, he will have to almost predict in advance how a game might turn out and need changing, then it was easy, you had the choices available, now if you have two midfielders underperforming you might only have one on the bench.
I cant say i really see the point in this rule, especially as it remains unchanged in the Premiership, I can understand why League 2 clubs and indeed some League 1 clubs would vote for it in that some weeks they may have players on the bench from the youth team, perhaps, who the manager has no real intention of using but he has to name a full bench and this presuambly costs money especially in away travel, but een they could just opt to name 5 if that was the case.