IAN HERBERT: Power plays by the wealthy elite are killing competition

There was a time when the art of football management entailed selecting the 11 players best suited for the task in hand and imbuing that group with all they needed to win.

‘We shared the ball, we shared the game, we shared the worries,’ Bill Shankly once said of the process. ‘No one was asked to do more than anyone else.’

Everyone accepts that the days of asking Gerry Byrne to play through a cup final against Leeds United with a broken collarbone — as Shankly did, in 1965, because there were no replacements — have long gone.

But the unconscionable and barely believable decision to allow every team to make five substitutions — change almost half the team in the span of a 90-minute football match — really does tell us that the game has gone, too.

The Premier League’s decision, which reinforces the notion that governing bodies gather every few months to discuss ways to make the game worse, removes any element of risk and challenge for managers of that select group of fabulously wealthy clubs who can spend indiscriminately.

If Manchester City’s right back is struggling against an unknown new left winger Crystal Palace have unearthed, Pep Guardiola can make a 15th-minute change.

If Chelsea are failing to score yet again, Thomas Tuchel can bring Romelu Lukaku on early. And both managers will still have four internationals ready to step out when their sides begin to tire.

No such luxury for Aston Villa, Burnley, Leicester City, Leeds United, West Ham and Wolves, who’ve fought this all the way. But the elite’s nauseatingly predictable pursuit of their wish has borne fruit, taking another chunk out of the competitiveness of the so-called ‘best league in the world’.

In their 1-0 win at Leicester earlier this season, City had Phil