Premier League Substitution Rules and Five Sub Limits
The premier league substitution rules for English football — five subs from a bench of nine, three windows, extra time and the concussion protocol.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Premier League19 min read
- Substitutions permitted
- 5
- Players named on the bench
- 9
- Substitution windows in normal time
- 3
- Additional substitutions in extra time
- 1
A substitution in English football is legally complete the moment the replacement crosses the touchline. Not when the fourth official raises the board, not when the departing player reaches the bench, and not when the referee waves. The instant the substitute's foot is on the field of play, he is a player and the man he replaced is a substituted player, and any offence either of them commits from that point is judged accordingly.
That single line in Law 3 does more work than any other part of the substitution rules, and it is the reason the rest of them exist. The Laws of the Game are written by the International Football Association Board, on which the four British associations hold half the votes; the Premier League, the English Football League and the Football Association then apply their own competition regulations on top, setting how many substitutes a club may name, how many it may use, and in how many stoppages. Those numbers have changed repeatedly. The framework underneath them has barely moved since 1965.
How many substitutes a Premier League side may name and use
Nine on the bench, five of them used. That is the position clubs settled on for the 2022-23 season after several years of argument, and it applies to every Premier League fixture.
The nine are named on the team sheet handed to the referee before kick-off, alongside the starting eleven. A player who is not on that sheet cannot take part in the match under any circumstance, which is why a squad player arriving late at a ground is a genuine administrative problem rather than an inconvenience. Once the sheet is submitted, the only permitted change before kick-off concerns a starting player who is injured in the warm-up: he may be replaced by a named substitute, and a further player may be added to the bench, subject to the competition's rules and the referee being informed.
- 5Substitutions permitted per club
- 9Players named on the bench
- 3Substitution windows in normal time
- 1Additional substitutions available in extra time
The fixed numbers in the competition's current regulations. The extra-time figure applies in domestic cup ties that go beyond ninety minutes, not in league fixtures.
Four of the nine will not play in most matches. Managers name a reserve goalkeeper who almost never appears, a young player who is there for the experience, and two more who are effectively on standby. The bench is a squad-management document as much as a tactical one, and the expansion to nine changed the second half of the season more than the ninety minutes of any individual match, for reasons set out further down this page.
One point trips up even experienced supporters. A goalkeeper who is sent off does not automatically trigger a substitution. The team may put an outfield player in goal instead, and if all five substitutions have already been used that is the only option available. There is no separate allowance for a dismissed goalkeeper and never has been.
Substitution windows, and why the three-window rule exists
The window is the constraint that actually shapes a match, and it was invented for a reason that had nothing to do with tactics.
When the temporary five-substitute allowance arrived in 2020, the obvious objection was that a manager could stop the game five separate times in the last twenty minutes, each stoppage costing thirty or forty seconds, and turn the closing stages into a series of interruptions. IFAB's answer was to cap the number of occasions rather than the number of players. A club gets three windows in normal time and may make one, two or three substitutions at each of them.
| Occasion | Does it use a window? |
|---|---|
| A stoppage during the first or second half | Yes |
| Half-time | No |
| The interval before extra time begins | No |
| Half-time in extra time | No |
| A stoppage during extra time | Yes, and one additional window is available |
| A concussion substitution | No, an additional window is granted |
Two consequences follow, and good managers exploit both. The first is that half-time is free, so a change a manager is minded to make on the hour is often made at the interval instead, purely to preserve a window. The second is that if both sides substitute during the same stoppage, each uses one of its own windows — they are counted per team, not per stoppage.
There is a procedural trap in the half-time exemption that catches clubs occasionally. A change made during the interval still has to be notified to the referee before the second half restarts. A manager who decides in the tunnel, sends a different player out, and tells nobody has not made a substitution at all — he has an unnotified player on the pitch, and the referee is entitled to treat it as an unauthorised entry with a caution and an indirect free kick. The exemption removes the cost of the window. It does not remove the paperwork.
The rule has a rough edge that the Laws acknowledge. A club that has used all three windows and then suffers an injury is stuck: it can bring a player off and leave itself with ten, or it can carry a limping player. There is no injury exception in normal time, and the only permanent exception is a head injury, which is dealt with separately. Whether that is the right balance is genuinely arguable. IFAB's position has been that any injury exception creates an incentive to feign one, and the history of football offers no evidence against that view.
When a substitution is legally complete under Law 3
The mechanics matter because they determine who is punished for what, and because a substitution done wrongly is one of the few remaining ways to concede a free kick from the touchline.
The sequence in the Laws runs like this. The referee must be informed before the change is made. The player coming off leaves the field of play, and since 2019 he must leave at the nearest point on the boundary line rather than walking the length of the pitch to the halfway line, unless the referee directs otherwise or the player needs treatment. The substitute waits outside the field until the departing player has left. He enters at the halfway line, during a stoppage, with the referee's permission. At that moment the substitution is complete.
Get any of it wrong and there is a specific answer:
- A substitute who enters without permission: play is stopped, he is cautioned, and the restart is an indirect free kick to the opposition from where the ball was when play was stopped.
- A substituted player who re-enters: the same treatment. Under standard competition rules in England he cannot return under any circumstance once he has been replaced.
- A player who refuses to leave, or leaves slowly to waste time: a caution for unsporting behaviour, and the time is added on regardless.
- Two players changing places, such as a goalkeeper swapping with an outfield player: not a substitution at all. It requires the referee's permission during a stoppage, and doing it without permission earns both players a caution.
The nearest-point rule is worth dwelling on because it changed something visible. Before 2019 the slow walk to the far touchline in the eighty-eighth minute was a recognised, tolerated and enormously irritating tactic. Making the player leave where he stands removed most of the value from it in a single sentence of law, which is about as efficient as rule-writing gets.
From Keith Peacock to a bench of nine
Substitutes did not exist in English league football until 21 August 1965. Keith Peacock of Charlton Athletic came on at Burnden Park against Bolton Wanderers that afternoon, replacing an injured goalkeeper, and became the first substitute used in a Football League fixture. For that first season a club could name one substitute and use him only for injury — the referee had to be satisfied that the player being replaced was genuinely hurt.
That restriction lasted a single year. Clubs found ways around it immediately, injuries became remarkably common in the seventieth minute, and from 1966-67 the tactical substitution was permitted outright. The pattern set there has repeated at every stage since: a limit is introduced with a purpose, the purpose is circumvented, and the limit is either abandoned or replaced with something enforceable.
| Period | Named | Usable | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1965-66 | 1 | 1 | Injury only, at the referee's discretion |
| From 1966-67 | 1 | 1 | Tactical substitutions permitted |
| Mid-1980s | 2 | 2 | A second substitute added by the Football League |
| Premier League, 1992-93 | 3 | 2 | One of the three had to be a goalkeeper |
| Mid-1990s onward | 3 | 3 | All three usable after FIFA extended the allowance |
| From 2008-09 | 7 | 3 | Bench enlarged, usable number unchanged |
| From 2022-23 | 9 | 5 | Five substitutions in three windows |
Two things stand out in that table. The gap between named and usable has widened at every step, which means the modern bench is only partly about substitutions and substantially about insurance. And the usable number sat at three for around a quarter of a century, from the mid-1990s until the pandemic, which is why three subs still feels to many English supporters like the natural state of the game rather than one setting among several.
The argument that took English clubs from three substitutes to five
In May 2020, with football suspended across Europe, IFAB issued a temporary amendment allowing competitions to use five substitutions in order to protect players returning from a long lay-off into a compressed fixture list. The Premier League adopted it for the resumption of the 2019-20 season in June. What happened next is the interesting part.
The allowance was temporary, so continuing it required a vote, and a Premier League rule change requires fourteen of twenty clubs. The proposal failed more than once. The clubs voting against were, broadly, those without the squad depth to use five substitutions well, and their argument was straightforward: a rule that allows a manager to change nearly half his outfield players advantages the club with the deepest and most expensive squad, which in a competition already stratified by wage bill is an amplifier rather than a neutral change.
The clubs in favour argued player welfare, and pointed at an English fixture calendar that is genuinely the most congested in Europe — a full domestic league, two domestic knockout competitions with no winter break to absorb them, European fixtures for the clubs that qualify, and no long shutdown in December. Medical staff supported it. So, publicly, did the players' union.
Fourteen votes arrived in March 2022 and five substitutions took effect from 2022-23, with the bench going to nine at the same time. Both sides of the argument were right about what would happen. Player welfare is better served. The advantage does accrue to the deeper squad, and a club with an expensively assembled bench can change a match in a way a promoted club cannot, which is the honest cost of the change rather than a talking point invented afterwards. The tension between those two facts is why the vote took two years.
Concussion substitutes and the English head injury protocol
Head injuries sit outside the ordinary allowance entirely, and English football adopted the additional permanent concussion substitute early. IFAB approved trials in January 2021; the Premier League and the FA joined, and the protocol was first used in England in the FA Cup during February 2021.
- IncidentThe referee stops play immediately for a suspected concussion and the club's medical staff come on to assess the player.
- AssessmentThe club doctor makes the call at the pitchside, supported by video review of the incident where it is available.
- DecisionIf concussion is suspected rather than excluded, the player is permanently removed. The governing principle is that a player with a suspected concussion does not continue.
- SubstitutionAn additional permanent concussion substitution is made, over and above the five ordinary substitutions, and an extra window is granted for it.
- EqualisationThe opposing team is granted one additional substitution and an additional window, so that neither side gains or loses by the injury.
- AftercareThe removed player enters a graduated return-to-play programme and cannot simply be selected again for the next fixture.
The sequence set out in the competition's head injury protocol. The medical judgement rests with the club doctor, not the manager or the referee.
The design deserves explanation because the details are what make it work. Each side may make up to two concussion substitutions. They are permanent — the player cannot come back — which is the entire point. The opposition equalisation exists so that a manager facing a genuinely injured opponent is not tempted to argue, and so that a club is never disadvantaged by its opponent's misfortune.
| Ordinary substitution | Concussion substitution | |
|---|---|---|
| Number available | 5 per club | Up to 2 per club, additional |
| Uses a window | Yes | No, an extra window is granted |
| Player may return | No | No |
| Who decides | The manager | The club doctor |
| Effect on the opposition | None | The opposing club receives an equivalent extra substitution |
There is an unresolved argument underneath this, and smoothing it over would misrepresent the position. Players' bodies internationally have pressed for a temporary concussion substitute — a ten-minute removal allowing an off-field assessment, with the player permitted to return if cleared. IFAB has consistently declined, on the grounds that a temporary system creates pressure to clear a player quickly and returns him to a contact sport within minutes of a blow to the head. The trial framework for permanent substitutes has been extended more than once and has not been written into the Laws with the finality that the five-substitute allowance eventually was. Anyone telling you the question is settled is describing a preference rather than the state of the rules.
Extra time in the domestic cups, and the sixth substitution
League fixtures in England are ninety minutes and that is the end of it. Extra time belongs to the knockout competitions, and it brings its own allowance.
Law 3 permits one additional substitution in extra time beyond whatever a team has used in normal time, along with one additional window. A side that has spent all five substitutions and all three windows by the ninetieth minute therefore still has a sixth change available, and two interval opportunities to make it without cost — the break before extra time begins, and half-time in extra time. Neither of those counts as a window.
The practical effect is that a manager going into extra time with a substitution in hand has a real advantage, and managers plan for it. Holding a substitution back in a tie heading for extra time is not caution; it is arithmetic. The player introduced in the ninety-fifth minute against opponents who have run 120 minutes is worth more than the same player introduced in the seventy-fifth.
Penalties are a separate matter and a common misunderstanding: no substitutions may be made once the shoot-out begins, with the single exception of a goalkeeper who is injured during the shoot-out itself, and then only if the team has a substitution and a place on the bench remaining. A team cannot bring on a specialist penalty-taker at the end of extra time unless it does so before the final whistle of the 120 minutes. The full sequence is covered in our guide to extra time and penalties in English cup ties.
The competitions differ in when extra time applies at all. The Carabao Cup goes straight to penalties in the early rounds without extra time in some formats, and the arrangements have been changed by the EFL more than once; the Carabao Cup format sets out the current shape. The FA Cup's approach changed substantially when replays were removed from the first round proper, an alteration described in how FA Cup replays work — with fewer second matches, extra time and penalties now decide far more ties than they used to.
Where the EFL and the non-league game differ
The five-substitution allowance is not a Premier League invention and is not confined to it. What varies below the top division is the bench, and the honest answer is that the number has moved.
The English Football League writes its own regulations for the Championship, League One and League Two, and its clubs vote on them. Bench sizes have differed between the three divisions at various points, have been changed at short notice, and are not always the same as the Premier League's nine. A guide that prints a single figure for the EFL will be wrong at some point in its life. Check the EFL's regulations for the specific division and season rather than assuming the top-flight number carries down.
Below the EFL the picture fragments further, which is what you would expect from a structure that runs from full-time professional football to Saturday afternoon clubs with a treasurer and a raffle. The National League and the steps beneath it operate under competition rules that reflect what clubs can realistically field: a bench of five is common, and squads at that level are not deep enough for nine to be meaningful. Our guide to the non-league steps explains how the divisions are organised, and the English football pyramid shows how far the structure extends.
Grassroots football operates under a genuinely different rule, and it is the one most readers will have played under without noticing. The FA permits return substitutions — rolling substitutes, in ordinary language — in specified competitions: youth football, veterans football, disability football and much of the recreational adult game. A player comes off, and later goes back on. That is expressly permitted by Law 3 at the discretion of the national association, and it is why Sunday morning football and Premier League football are playing the same sport under materially different rules on this specific point.
The late substitution as a clock-management device
Every substitution made after the eightieth minute buys time. The player leaves, the replacement enters, the ball goes back into play — and even executed briskly the sequence consumes half a minute of a match that has about ten minutes left. Five substitutions and three windows give a leading side a legitimate, entirely within-the-laws method of shortening the game.
Referees have three counters and use all of them. The nearest-point departure rule, described above, removes the walk. The added time is calculated to include the stoppage rather than a notional allowance, so the time comes back. And a player who dawdles once warned is cautioned, which changes the calculation for the player rather than the manager.
None of that fully solves it, because a manager making a genuine tactical change and a manager killing the clock look identical from the technical area, and the referee cannot read intent. The distinction is unenforceable by design. What the current rules do is remove the profit rather than the practice: the time is added, so the substitution costs the leading team the seconds it was trying to save.
Watch a Premier League match closely and you can see managers pricing this in. The third window is frequently held back to the eighty-fifth minute or later, not because a change is needed then, but because a change made then is worth more as a stoppage than the same change made on the hour would be as football.
What the referee controls, and how the time gets added back
The referee's authority over substitutions is broader than it appears. He decides whether the change may be made, when it may be made, and whether the players concerned have complied with the procedure. He may refuse permission to enter at a moment when doing so would disadvantage the attacking side — a substitution is not a right to stop play.
Added time is where the substitution rules meet the clock, and the calculation changed materially in the 2023-24 season. Referees in England were directed to account far more accurately for time genuinely lost, following the approach applied at the 2022 World Cup: goal celebrations, substitutions, penalties, injuries, treatment on the pitch, disciplinary stoppages and VAR checks are each assessed rather than absorbed into a round number. The immediate result was longer second halves and a good deal of complaint, most of it from clubs that had been benefiting from the previous approach.
There is a convention, not a law, that a substitution costs roughly half a minute. It is a working assumption referees have long used rather than a figure written into Law 7, and the current instruction is to measure what actually happened rather than apply a tariff. Our explainer on stoppage time in the Premier League works through the whole calculation.
The fourth official's board displays the minimum. The referee may play longer, and frequently does, because time lost during added time is itself added. Nothing in the Laws entitles a team to have the whistle blown the instant the board's number is reached, which is the source of roughly half the touchline arguments in English football.
What a bench of nine does to squad building
The rule change that looks like a tactical adjustment is really a squad-building one, and its effects show up in transfer policy rather than in individual matches.
Nine bench places and five usable substitutions mean that a Premier League club needs, functionally, around eighteen players capable of contributing in a top-flight fixture rather than around thirteen. That is a different recruitment problem. It raises the value of the versatile squad player who can cover two positions competently, and it makes the deep, expensive squad measurably more valuable than it was when only three of those players could ever get on the pitch in a given match.
It also changes what a loan is for. A young player who might once have gone out on loan for game time now has a plausible route to minutes at his parent club, because a manager with five substitutions will use one on a nineteen-year-old in a match that is already decided in a way he would not have when substitutions were scarce. Set against that, the same rule lets a wealthy club retain a larger squad without those players stagnating, which is exactly the stockpiling that the loan regulations elsewhere in the English game are designed to limit.
There is a second-order effect on the players themselves that is rarely discussed. Being on a bench of nine is a materially worse experience than being on a bench of five, because the probability of appearing has not risen in proportion to the number sitting there. Five substitutions divided among nine candidates still leaves four men who warmed up, changed, sat through ninety minutes in a tracksuit and went home. Squad players describe the ninth place on a bench as close to being left out entirely, and it is one reason clubs have become more careful about which fringe professionals they keep and which they send elsewhere for a season.
The squad registration rules interact with all of this. A Premier League club registers a maximum of 25 over-21 players, at least eight of whom must be homegrown, with under-21s unlimited and outside the list — the details are in the Premier League squad size rules. Five substitutions do not increase the size of the registered squad. They increase the proportion of it that gets used, which is a quieter change and, over a season of thirty-eight fixtures plus cups, a much larger one.
For everything else the competition's rulebook governs — from disciplinary suspensions to the appointment of the officials who administer all of the above — the rest of our English football coverage and the England guides hub are the places to start.