The Football League's member clubs have voted to reverse their earlier decision to allow clubs to name seven substitutes in the Football League competitions. At an EGM held today at Leicester City's King Power Stadium (formerly the Walkers Stadium) clubs will now only be able to name five substitutes for the 2011-12 season.
In a statement issued by the Football League this afternoon, they state:
"This was felt to be a sensible and prudent step given the financial challenges facing many football clubs and the commitment made earlier this summer to adopt UEFA's Financial Fair Play framework."
The rules allowing seven substitutes to be named in the Carling Cup and FA Cup competitions will remain as they are today. The Johnstone's Paint Trophy had preserved five substitutes as part of it's own competition rule and so is also unchanged.
The rule to allow seven substitutes to be named was introduced for the FA Cup and Carling Cup during the summer of 2008 and was followed a year later for Football League matches. The objective was to allow clubs the ability to blood younger players via the substitutes bench.
If that was the idea, it appears not to have worked - in the case of players like Craig Calver and Billy Gibson for Yeovil Town, they stayed on the bench for the majority of last season, when with five substitutes allowed, they might have been able to gain some first team experience via a loan.
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21 July 2011 : 
