Robbie Savage had fans scratching their heads on Tuesday night by making four susbtitutions in the first minute.
The Forest Green Rovers boss, formerly a Premier League star, made the curious intervention as he watched his side take on Wolves’ U21s in the National League Cup.
What’s even more confusing to the uninitiated is the fact that Savage has already done similar this season; he also hooked a couple of stars just two minutes into a win over West Brom’s U21s in August.
But it turns out that the Welshman had a perfectly valid reason to make the drastic switch. He was just wriggling his way around the competition’s rules.
In the National League Cup, teams must field at least four stars who started in their previous league game.
That means Savage was forced to ‘play’ a quartet of stars who he didn’t want on the pitch – and so he subbed them off at the first opportunity.
Robbie Savage made four subs in the first minute as Forest Green Rovers played on Tuesday
Savage, who is uneabetn in 11 games at Forest Gree, found a way around the National League Cup rules as his side beat Wolves’ U21s 3-2
Neil Kengni, Abraham Kanu, Thomas Knowles, and Kyle McAllister had all started in their 1-1 draw on Saturday.
Evidently Savage wanted to rest them because some of them didnt even get a sight of the ball before their boss ended their night.
Rochdale also did the same thing on Tuesday, hooking two stars within a minute of their match against Blackburn’s U21s kicking off.
And the change paid off for both teams, with Forest Green and Rochdale both winning their clashes 3-2.
Bradford City have also been forced into this behaviour before. In 2016, they took off goalkeeper Colin Doyle in the second minute after being made to start five ‘first-team’ stars in the EFL Trophy.
Savage has made a storming start to life at the New Lawn since taking over in July, winning eight of his 11 games in charge and drawing the other three.
Rovers, who are owned by green energy magnate Dale Vince, sit second in the National League after picking up 21 points in nine games – though that is only good enough for a play-off spot.
For Savage, this is a step up from managing at Macclesfield, where last season he won promotion from the Northern Premier League, the seventh tier of English football.
Green energy tycoon Dale Vince is the owner of National League club Forest Green Rovers
He won 40 of his 51 games in charge of the Cheshire club and is continuing to chart one of the most exciting early-career managerial trajectories.
After securing a 98th-minute equaliser against Scunthorpe on Saturday, he declared that Forest Green can be ‘unstoppable’ if they play to their potential.
‘Right now I believe only we can beat us,’ he said. ‘That’s what I want to instil in my players, that invincibility that when they cross that white line, if you can work as exceptionally hard as we’re doing, nobody can beat us.
‘If we make a mistake or there’s a set piece or we switch off, then yes, we can get beaten. If we play to the maximum capability of us, we’ll be unstoppable.’
He was even in among the fans in the stands in their recent 1-0 win over Hartlepool, a sign of how he wants to connect intimately with supporters.
Forest Green are targeting promotion back to League Two at the second time of asking after finishing third last campaign and losing to Southend United in the play-offs. They’re in the fifth tier after suffering a double relegation from League One.
