High five – Premier League clubs make most of new substitution allowance

Premier League clubs made the most of the new rule allowing five substitutions on the opening weekend of the new season.

The numbers of changes allowed was raised from three for the new season and 13 of the 20 clubs made either four or five changes in their opening fixture.

Here, the PA news agency looks at how managers deployed their additional resources – and which ones chose not to.

While only two games saw the full complement of 10 substitutes used – Tottenham’s rout of Southampton and Manchester City’s win at West Ham – every match saw at least four substitutions from a single team and the average team made 3.85 changes.

Crystal Palace and Arsenal kicked things off with four and three substitutions respectively on Friday night, with Palace making the first ‘extra’ substitution over last season’s allocation when Will Hughes and Malcolm Ebiowei were both introduced in the 86th minute.

Saturday’s early game between Fulham (three) and Liverpool (four) repeated the pattern and Newcastle joined Spurs and Southampton as the first teams to make five changes during the 3pm kick-offs.

Five more followed – Chelsea in the Saturday evening game and Brentford, Manchester United, West Ham and City on Sunday – for a total of eight across the weekend maxing out their resources.

Palace and Liverpool were joined by Aston Villa, Leeds and Brighton in making four changes, while Arsenal, Fulham, Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest and Everton stuck with the three that would have been allowed previously – despite the Toffees losing two centre-backs to injury.

The notable outliers were Wolves, who waited until the 85th minute to introduce youngster Chem Campbell as their only substitute, and Leicester who introduced only Patson Daka from the