Manchester United caretaker boss Ralf Rangnick feels that the Premier League should bring back the five substitute rule.
The Red Devils are one of the clubs in the Premier League that shut down their training ground after the team was affected by COVID 19.
Rangnick feels it would make sense to reinstate five subs – a rule which has remained in the rest of Europe’s top leagues since it was introduced in summer 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
The Premier League is meeting managers and captains on Thursday afternoon to discuss how best to manage player welfare as fixture congestion becomes a big issue, confounded by the busy winter schedule.
“The five subs were implemented when Covid started, and I think it was the right decision to do that to save energy for players, especially if they have just recovered from Covid,” said Rangnick, ahead of the Monday Night Football encounter with Newcastle.
“The same is true right now – we are in a similar situation to the one we had one-and-a-half years ago, therefore I don’t see why it shouldn’t be as it was one-and-a-half years ago. As far as I know, in Europe England is the only country where they only allow three subs.
“You’re still allowed eight field players on the team sheet, you should be able to replace five, you will always have five players on the bench who cannot be substituted on and cannot play.”
He added: “I think it would be of great help to have five subs. I would be much more in favour of having five subs. I think we should seriously think about that again. Most of the players would be in favour of that.”
The German also gave team update ahead of the Newcastle clash on Monday as he claims Paul Pogba is the only one out due to injury.
“Yes, as you know, we had last week, the last training session on Thursday, on that day we had eight outfield players and three goalkeepers and then we closed down the training ground for four days in order to break the chain,” Ralf told reporters at his pre-match press conference.
“Today was the third day of training this week, we started on Tuesday, we trained yesterday and today.
“Today we had 25 outfield players. Paul Pogba is the only one missing, everyone else was on board. The development in the last week was extremely positive.”
The manager added that the team is in good shape as they all trained well today and he admits on having difficulty in selecting his team ahead of Magpies clash.
“Well as far as I could see in training today, they are all in good shape,” he added.
“They did their homework, they all have their schedules to train at home and they stuck to that schedule and programme.
“From what I saw, I can say most of them, if not all of them, might be available, and of course I would have to take some difficult decisions as to who will be in the squad, who will be in the starting XI.”
Source: Skysports
