Andros Townsend of Everton visited Talksport and devised a very small sermon in the direction of Jurgen Klopp, and, in an ironic tone, opened the winger with the following remarks:
I love the way Jürgen Klopp has managed to find his way again.
The topic of conversation is that the Premier League, like the rest of the world, will now allow each team to make five player changes per match. So far, the English first division has lagged behind the rest because there was no necessary majority among the clubs to present the scheme. They thought the big clubs, with the biggest stables, got a huge advantage. But when FIFA made it permanent, the Premier League finally threw itself in.
Townsend doesn’t seem too excited, and he blames Klopp for the fact that teams can now make five changes.
– He’s been sobbing for several years. They were resisted, but in the end the others gave up and made sure he got five catches. Townsend, who believes that in the meetings between Liverpool and Manchester City, it is likely that he will only continue to use two or three substitutions in the big matches.
He gets a little bit unfair
The Everton player believes the top teams will benefit more from the extra exchanges in matches against the bottom teams.
In matches against teams like Crystal Palace and Brentford, when they can’t beat them. When the score is 0-0 and they have eleven men behind the ball. But then you can put together five world-class players with healthy legs who can change the game. The 30-year-old, who has pasts at Tottenham, Newcastle and Crystal Palace, says I think it would be a bit unfair.
Townsend appears to be tired of Klopp trying to gain a foothold for his views on football.
– In recent seasons we’ve seen that he talks about it constantly and about the polls and in the end he gets what he wants. Last season, he also talked a lot about the schedule and complained and complained. And suddenly BT Sport prepared Liverpool for a Saturday night game, something I had never seen before in the Premier League. All too often, Townsend says, all the complaints led him to get what he wanted.
He got support from the players union
Townsend doesn’t seem to realize that his own union, the Professional Players Association, has gone to great lengths to offer five replacements on a permanent basis. With more and more matches over the course of a year for players, everything pointing in the direction of five substitutions and bigger player teams on match day, the Premier League clubs who opposed eventually had to bow out.
Klopp previously stated that the Premier League has a responsibility to protect its players when the match schedule is the same.
As for the point Townsend made regarding matches Saturday night, changes will be made there next season as well. If a team plays a game in Europe on Wednesday night, they will escape the controversial early game the following Saturday. Instead, BT Sport will move its game to Saturday night to give teams better time to recover.
And in the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City, where they had five substitutes at their disposal, Klopp chose to use four. Pep Guardiola only made one substitution.