Swans were the only team who played football in first half, a clear goal ruled offside, but once the momentum of the game changed to a stop, start, stop start affair it suited the home team.
Possibly, the subs could have been changed earlier, or even when Ronald tangled with Cochrane where Benson could play on the right, but the nine yellow cards issued summed up a game that only suited a team struggling to get their game going.
As for taking players off early, especially after a tough match 3 days earlier one just assumes that the sports science guys are continually monitoring players' fitness and the levels of Galbraith etc, were still high enough to enable the player/s to carry on.
One interesting aspect of the game occurred when Cochrane had to go off with a blood wound. As he was going off Allsop the Brum keeper sat down with a leg injury which saw the game failing to restart. By the time Cochrane's head was bandaged plus a change of shirt, Allsop lifted himself from the ground and Cochrane was ready to come back on the field. Hardly no time for Brum to play with ten men and just one of those dark arts in the game which coaches resort to.