Premier League grant season-long Thomas Tuchel request that gives Chelsea a title advantage

It was all the way back in October that Thomas Tuchel first suggested he was unhappy with the Premier League's choice to restrict clubs to just three in-game substitutions. The spectators want the top players on the pitch, they want them healthy and they want them fit and in shape, hungry," the Chelsea head coach said.

"You cannot always provide it if you play so many games in so many different competitions. And given the fact that we only have three changes allowed in the Premier League – and not five like the other leagues – it is a big thing that we have to cope with."

Fast forward two months and Tuchel's protestations became vehement with Chelsea in the midst of a selection crisis caused by injuries and a spate of positive Covid cases. “I absolutely cannot understand, zero percent, why we are the only league who plays through winter and why we are the only league with three substitutes in a period of heavy, heavy Covid threat and situations," the German said in December.

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“It makes absolutely zero sense. It is the situation, and that is worrying. The schedule is not the problem. We love the schedule. Five changes were invented in the UK when Covid first started. Now we are in the middle of it, I get the feeling that everybody is refusing it or refusing to think about it.”

It's taken far longer than Tuchel would have liked, but clubs across the Premier League appear to have finally come to the same conclusion as the Chelsea head coach. According to The Times, top-flight sides are set to agree to the five substitutions rule being permitted from next season in a meeting tomorrow.

Will that prove hugely beneficial for