Blues boss Paul Lambert has reiterated his backing for the EFL’s move to five subs for the remainder of the season from this weekend which was announced on Wednesday.
Lambert had previously said he felt the authorities should have kept with the policy which was introduced when 2019/20 restarted in order to reduce the load on players with games coming thick and fast.
Asked whether he believes the move will benefit the Blues given their strength in depth, Lambert responded: "Yes, but we’ve got a lot of injuries at the minute. We’ve probably got more injuries than we’d hoped for but we have to get through it.
"You read [the same about] clubs up and down the country, even from the Premier League, you look at the problems, it’s too much to cope with.”
He says common sense has finally prevailed given the current circumstances.
"I think so," he reflected. "What I don’t get is why they didn’t do it at the beginning. We got asked the beginning of the season about the different criteria. I was against the water breaks because I felt that was always stopping the game 20 minutes or 15 minutes in the game.
"The five subs I was an advocate of because I thought this would happen with the injuries that would curtail people and I think it’s been proven.
"But why wasn’t it brought in at the beginning? People say that it helped the bigger clubs, but you know yourself when you do pre-season you can have two teams 11 v 11 and the first team can be unbelievable in the first half and in the second half be really poor.
"So when you’re making that many changes, it can be detrimental to you. For me the five subs isn’t going to benefit any of the big clubs, that’s just my opinion. I think what it will do is help the injuries that’s for sure.”
Lambert believes the five-sub rule - which the Premier League is yet to move to - would have less of an impact at that level in terms of benefiting the bigger clubs.
"No, because I think if you look at the Premier League level, I think it’s all strong. I think the teams are really strong," he said.
"We played Fulham here a few weeks ago and I thought they were very, very good, Scott [Parker] has got a really good team there.
"I still don’t believe the five subs is going to make a huge, huge difference to the bigger squads. I really don’t.
"I just think the injuries will definitely help everybody, and I think what’s happening is the amount of injuries happening if you look at Liverpool for example, injuries left, right and centre.
"And you look at their back-ups, are they as good as the ones that went out? Only Jurgen [Klopp] can answer that. But injury-wise it will certainly help them.”
While the Championship will be moving to a bench of nine players from which the five can be selected, Leagues One and Two are sticking with the current seven.
"The way the injuries are at the minute, we couldn’t fill nine men, that’s the thing we’ve got,” Lambert continued when asked whether he would have preferred Town matchday squads to have increased to 20.
"I don’t know. That’s why I find it really incredible. You’re having one rule for one league and different rules for another. For me that’s a strange thing. But the five-sub rule is definitely correct, without a doubt that’s correct. But again that’s my opinion.
"Nine men on the bench, keeping everybody involved, that could happen, but you’ve got to be able to fill it and at this moment we can’t fill it.”