My team-mate was subbed off at half time, he threw a boot at the manager then lost a punch-up with him
IT’S the greatest public humiliation that a footballer can suffer.
The biggest slap in the face a professional can get.
A moment when a player is torn between wanting to chin his manager or wanting the floor to open up beneath him.
Being substituted at half-time is bad enough — and that’s the worst that ever happened to me.
But being hooked by your manager, without any hint of an injury, during the first half of a match carries an extreme sense of embarrassment.
When his in-form Fulham team fell 2-0 behind at struggling Nottingham Forest after just 19 minutes on Tuesday night, Marco Silva did not just inflict this punishment on one player but THREE of them.
When Alex Iwobi, Harry Wilson and Sasa Lukic were hauled off in the 33rd minute, it was the earliest triple substitution in Premier League history.
Those players will have been angry or mortified, or probably both. But Silva has history when it comes to early subs.
When he was my manager at Watford, I was on the bench as I’d only just come back from injury and we were 1-0 down at home to Southampton.
Halfway through the first half, he turned to me and said ‘get warmed up, you’re coming on now’.
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I thought he was joking but he said ‘I’m f***ing serious!’
On that occasion, he actually waited until half-time to bring me on and we did turn a 2-0 deficit into a 2-2 draw.
Not that it helped Silva, as he was sacked that week — although that was more to do with him being approached by Everton.
The most extreme example I’ve witnessed of a player taking an early substitution badly came later on in my time at Watford.
One of my team-mates, who must remain nameless, was told he was being taken off at half-time and he responded by overturning a treatment table in the dressing room in a fit of rage, then forcefully chucking a boot at the manager.
The boss was not a man to shy away from confrontation and the bout of fisticuffs which followed lasted fewer than ten seconds — with the chief coming out on top.
That match was goalless at the break and we lost 1-0 so the flare-up didn’t work — just as Silva’s triple substitution failed to have the desired effect this week, as Fulham ended up losing 3-1.
In a way, an early substitution — and especially three early changes — is an admission that a manager has got his original team selection wrong.
So there is an element of bravery about it. Not that you would see it that way if you were on the receiving end.
If a player is taken off before half-time — and even in an age of five subs, it is still very rare — then it is an awkward situation for his team-mates as well, because the embarrassment factor is so obvious. You don’t know where to look or what to say.
When a player is subbed early on, he has little option but to sit on the bench and suck it up.
Because if he throws a tantrum and goes straight down the tunnel, then the manager can say to the rest of the team ‘that’s why I did it, his attitude stinks’.
And then you’ve lost any argument you might want to have. There’s also extra punishment for a player subbed in the first half.
It means he has to do a full training session with ‘the bomb squad’ and the kids the following day — because he won’t have gone over the threshold of minutes played, which allows him to have the usual lighter warm-down session the day after a game.
In my early days at Watford, the manager Malky Mackay subbed me off at half-time in a match at Preston, and replaced me with a teenager.
I was absolutely seething. I was playing on the wing and had hardly seen anything of the ball. It wasn’t as if I’d had a stinker.
I can still remember the feeling of being shamed by that.
The score was 1-1 at the break and we lost 3-1. It was Malky’s last match as Watford boss before he quit to take over at Cardiff.
Those three Fulham players who were pulled after half an hour or so will have been training with a mixture of anger and extreme motivation this week, desperate to prove Silva wrong.
But I’d be surprised if any of them ever forget the feeling of seeing their number coming up on the electronic board and having to make that long walk of shame to the bench so early in a game.
It makes me wince just thinking about it.