Is the Premier League ready to embrace a substitution revolution?

José Mourinho had many faces as a Premier League manager. Chameleon-like, alternating from boisterous to grumpy.

If Chelsea’s Premier League title win in 2015 had all the hallmarks of a Tom Wambsgans redemption arc, his incarnation from 2004 to 2007 was defined by the energy of his main character Logan Roy. Every match felt infused with Mourinho razzmatazz – good or bad. It is little wonder that when Chelsea lost to neighbors Fulham for the first time in 27 years on March 20, 2006, Mourinho retained his role as chief newsmaker.

For a sloppy 1-0 win, the game was something of a revolution. William Gallas saw red late on and offered Fulham fans a relatively innocent thumbs down. Home fans then entered the field, which resulted in a response from the away section and a police intervention on the field.

But all that was overshadowed by Mourinho’s substitutions. On 26 minutes he removed Joe Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips for Damian Duff and Didier Drogba – both of whom looked a little sheepish as they extended a hand to their irate departing teammates. Mourinho wasn’t done there yet. At half-time, Robert Huth was hooked on fellow centre-back Ricardo Carvalho.

Even for Mourinho this was arrogant. Not least that we were betting on the prospect of yet another numerical disadvantage should his team suffer an injury. He was bothered by the morale of the team and the unrest among the players; he showed the world that there were members of his team that he did not fully trust.

Time has not eased the stigma surrounding early substitutions. When Erik Ten Hag withdrew Sofian Amrabat during the Manchester derby break, the rhetoric quickly turned to talk of a lack of identity and distrust of players by the manager, rather than a tactical change that bore no fruit.

When coaches describe changes as tactical, many view them with skepticism. Tactics, certainly. But what is the real reason? Perhaps arming reporters with polygraph capabilities or giving them a license to be an all-morning talk show host is the next step in football entertainment.

So far this season, there have been 47 half-time substitutions in Premier League matches up to and including matchweek 10, an increase of 17 on last season’s 30. Most of these changes would be broadly defined as tactical, but what does that mean?

Substitutions do not lead to a series of formation changes. They are often like-for-like swaps. Only four of the 47 come from teams in a winning position. There have also been changes forced by red cards, such as Ashley Young’s dismissal in the 37th minute in the Merseyside derby.

It is clear that the use of five substitutes has been a major driver of the increase. It is also worth noting that changes made at half-time do not count as an interruption, and therefore a manager can still choose to make substitutions at three other points of a match, provided they do not exceed a total of amounts to five bills.

Changes around the hour are the order of the day: the classic dividing point where a manager is free to do what he wants. Players talked to each other during halftime. Instructions have been re-emphasized. They have 15 minutes to show that they ‘get it’.

The concept of fresh legs in football is as old as time. But due to the demands now placed on players, reinforcements are more likely to be chosen. Chris Wilder once labeled the concept of mental and physical strain on players as ‘nonsense’ when discussing the introduction of two more subs. He was convinced it would not help his Sheffield United side compared to bigger clubs. Bigger clubs had bigger teams with better alternatives, the theory went. Wilder would prefer to reduce the margin of error by sticking to his original line-up with a few adjustments. He could not rely on Jeremy Doku, Mateo Kovacic, Julián Álvarez, Jack Grealish And Matheus Nunes, as Pep Guardiola has been able to do this season.

Yet the spread of subs is more marginal than Wilder had in mind. This season the split between top and bottom half clubs changing players during the break is almost even. Brighton led the way with six. Burnley, Wolves and Arsenal have all made five.

Football remains obsessed with the idea of ​​hierarchy based on skill. A Premier League player entering the field may be guilty before the ball has been kicked if he is not considered as competent as the player leaving the field.

We are nowhere near a more transatlantic approach to this. Leagues like the NFL and NBA take an inclusive approach to squad usage, with concepts like rotation patterns and mass unit rotations being more common.

In any case, there is an argument that it makes more sense for those at the bottom of the league to employ the half-time substitution strategy even more. If you play at The Etihad or Emirates without possession, are moved from left to right, up and down and have to constantly use sprints and recovery runs, does it really matter who plays right back, for example? Don’t you just need lungs and energy? Isn’t it better to have someone with maximum concentration than someone who can stand better with the ball at his feet?

Nottingham Forest produced a further 160 touches in last weekend’s 3-0 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, a match that ended with the home side having 72.6% of the ball possession. Forest is an interesting example of a club putting together a team for this purpose. Steve Cooper clearly wants different options and is willing to change regularly to maximize freshness.

We see this more often outside the Premier League. England sides in Europe have rotated and made changes this season, regardless of the scoreboard context. They plan to make replacements as part of their long-term approach to meeting fixture demand.

The game is often about getting through the next five minutes. The bite-sized chunks of surviving the next attack, staying in team shape or building play. We remain ideologically bound to the identity of two 45-minute halves, but is that true? Real Is it so absurd to imagine a completely different personnel approach to both? Could the future of the game involve having a three-thirds plan and strategy that includes halftime either side of the 30 and 60 minutes? It could certainly alleviate some of the concerns around player wellbeing and fatigue. The purist argument will be that it demeans the concept of competition – but this is not a problem in other team sports around the world.

Football players remain crucial to any cultural change. Mourinho’s example remains the extreme. Players are fragile commodities. They apparently view being dropped at any point before the 89th minute as a form of subliminal criticism or existential perception that they are not good enough. How often do we see broadcasts about a player who has just been removed, a subtle head-shaking gesture indicating to anyone, anywhere, that they could have continued?

In general, the football world sleeps on the assumption that those who start a match will solely dictate its outcome. And that starting reflects much more than just being asked to fill a role at the beginning of a game and not the middle or end of it.

We are slowly moving towards a concept of a three-way half-time substitution being implemented and accepted as a planned strategy to get players running 90 minutes in 45 minutes. It’s a tactic waiting to evolve in a space hungry for the next marginal gain. .

Perhaps we will look back at Mourinho at Fulham and discover that once again he was a visionary, a maverick of men who was ahead of his time. Or, as was probably the case, he was just pissed off and decided to do something about it.

Replacements have changed since then, but for the most part remain enshrined in an increasingly outdated ideology.