Is the Premier League ready to embrace a substitution revolution?

José Mourinho wore many faces as a Premier League manager. Chameleon-like, shifting from rambunctious to cantankerous.

If Chelsea’s 2015 Premier League title win had all the hallmarks of a Tom Wambsgans redemption arc, his 2004 to 2007 incarnation was defined by his Logan Roy lead character energy. Every game felt tinged with Mourinho razzmatazz – good or bad. No wonder, then, when Chelsea lost to neighbors Fulham for the first time in 27 years on 20 March 2006, Mourinho preserved his role as chief headline maker.

For a scrappy 1-o win, the game was something of a revolution. William Gallas saw red late on and offered Fulham fans a relatively inoffensive thumbs down. Home fans then invaded the pitch, which resulted in a reaction from the away section and an on-pitch Police intervention.

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

Even for Mourinho, this was cavalier. Not least that we was gambling on the prospect of a further numerical disadvantage if his team picked up an injury. He was dicing with squad morale and player unrest; he showed the world there were members of his squad he didn’t fully trust.

Time hasn’t eased any stigma around early substitutions. When Erik Ten Hag withdrew Sofian Amrabat at the Manchester derby interval, the rhetoric moved quickly to talk of a lack of identity and the manager distrusting players rather than a tactical shift that didn’t pay off.

When coaches describe changes as tactical, many view them with skepticism. Tactics, sure. But what’s the real reason? Perhaps arming reporters with lie detector capabilities or giving them license to go full morning television talkshow host is the next frontier of soccer entertainment.

So far this season, there have been 47 half-time substitutions made in Premier League matches through match week 10, up 17 on last season’s 30. The bulk of those changes would broadly be defined as tactical, but what does that mean?

Replacements are not ushering in a raft of formation shifts. They are often be like-for-like swaps. Only four of the 47 have come from teams in a winning position. There have also been changes enforced by red cards, such as Ashley Young’s 37th-minute dismissal in the Merseyside derby.

Obviously, the use of five substitutes has been a key driver of the increase. It’s also worth noting that changes made at half-time aren’t counted as a stoppage, and therefore a manager can still choose to make subs at three other points of a match, provided they don’t exceed five total swaps.

Changes around the hour mark are commonplace – the classic point of demarcation when a manager is free to do as they please. Players have had a half-time talking to. Instructions have been re-emphasized. They’re given 15 minutes to show they get ‘it’.

The concept of fresh legs in football is as old as time. But the demands being placed on players now mean reinforcements are being opted for earlier. Chris Wilder once labeled the concept of mental and physical demand on players as “bollocks” when discussing the introduction of two further subs. He was adamant that it wouldn’t help his Sheffield United side in comparison to bigger clubs. Bigger clubs had bigger squads with better alternatives, the theory went. Wilder would rather decrease the margin for error by sticking with his original lineup with a couple of tweaks. He could not call on Jeremy Doku, Mateo Kovacic, Julián Álvarez, Jack Grealish and Matheus Nunes, as Pep Guardiola has been able to this season.

Yet the spread of subs is more marginal than Wilder envisaged. This season, the split between top and bottom-half clubs swapping players at the break is virtually even. Brighton lead the way with six. Burnley, Wolves and Arsenal have all made five.

Football remains obsessed with the notion of hierarchy based on ability. A Premier League player entering a pitch can be culpable before a ball is kicked if he isn’t deemed to be as competent as the one leaving.

Jürgen Klopp hugs Diogo Jota as he leaves the pitch during the between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Photograph: Jon Super/AP

We’re nowhere near adopting a more transatlantic approach to this. Leagues like the NFL and NBA have an inclusive approach to squad use, where concepts like substitution patterns and the wholesale switching of units are more commonplace.

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If anything, there’s an argument that it makes more sense for those at the bottom of the league to employ the half-time change strategy even more. If you’re playing at The Etihad or Emirates with no possession, being moved left to right, up and down and constantly having to put sprints and recovery runs in, does it really matter who is playing right wing-back, for example? Don’t you just need lungs and energy? Isn’t it better to have someone at peak concentration rather than someone who’s better with the ball at their feet?

Nottingham Forest put in 160 more ball pressures in last weekend’s 3-0 loss to Liverpool at Anfield, a game that ended with the home side having 72.6% of the possession. Forest are an interesting example of a club padding out a squad for this purpose. Steve Cooper clearly wants different options and is willing to rotate on a regular basis to maximize freshness.

We are seeing more of this outside the Premier League. English sides in Europe this season have rotated and brought in changes regardless of scoreboard context. They’ve planned to make substitutes as part of their long-term approach to conquer fixture demands.

The game is often about getting through the next five minutes. The bite-size chunks of surviving the next attack, staying in team shape or building play. We remain ideologically wedded to the identity of two 45 minute halves, but is it really so absurd to imagine a vastly different personnel approach to both? Could the future of the game be about having a plan and strategy for three thirds which incorporate half-time either side of the 30 and 60 minute mark? It could certainly pacify some of the concerns around player welfare and fatigue. The purist argument will be that it demeans the concept of competition – yet this isn’t a problem in other team sports around the world.

Footballers remain pivotal to any culture shift. Mourinho’s example remains the extreme. Players are fragile commodities. They seemingly view being brought off at any point before the 89th minute as some form of subliminal criticism or existential perception that they’re not good enough. How often do we see broadcasts cut to a player who’s just been removed, a subtle head-shake to indicate to everyone, everywhere, that they could have kept going?

In general, the football world is sleeping on the sense that those who start a game will solely dictate its outcome. And that starting reflects much more than merely being asked to fulfil a role at the beginning of a game and not its middle or end.

We’re slowly gravitating towards a concept of a triple half-time change being made and accepted as a planned strategy of getting players to do 90 minutes of running in 45. It’s a tactic waiting to evolve in a space that craves the next marginal gain.

Maybe we’ll look back at Mourinho at Fulham and glean that he was yet again a visionary, a maverick of men ahead of his time. Or, as was likely the case, he was just pissed off and decided to do something about it.

Substitutions have changed since then, yet for the most part remain fixed in an increasingly outdated ideology.

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