Liverpool and Man Utd wanted five subs but then make a mockery of player welfare

On the day the Premier League finally kowtowed to the likes of Jurgen Klopp, Ralf Rangnick and their respective clubs, allowing five substitutes to be used because players might get tired, a press release arrived from Old Trafford.

Manchester United will play Liverpool in Bangkok on July 12 in something named ‘The Match’ Centenary Cup. They must mean ‘The Money” Centenary Cup, obviously, but whatever you want to call the friendly, one thing is for sure … it has not been organised with footballers’ welfare in mind. It is to keep the punters in the Far East sweet.

Yep, go halfway around the world in pre-season for nothing other than dollar and then moan about fatigue during a 38-match Premier League season. Covid interrupted the annual wheeze but you know the score by now.

There is surely not a manager out there who believes a long-haul tour of the Far East and Australia is the best way to prepare for the rigours of a Premier League season. Yet off they pop for the cash and then bleat about punitive schedules. And about footballers’ welfare, because that, it seems, is why the Premier League has fallen into line and succumbed to the five-substitute allowance. Or it has fallen into line because the clubs who KNOW it is a rule-change that benefits the established elite have accepted they are in thrall to them.

They don’t want to fall out with the clubs who draw the big TV money. That is why more than 14 clubs voted this in. Yet it is still less than a year since the so-called Big Six were, momentarily, pariahs of the game for planning to play in some joke of a super league. That moment turned out to be football’s equivalent of a nano-second. They still rule the roost. In the grand scheme of things, the five-sub regulation