Vladimir Ivic has backed calls for teams in the Championship to be able to use five substitutions after their 3-2 win over Coventry City.

With teams in the second tier playing more or less twice a week following a truncated pre-season, the Serbian believes players are at greater risk of injury.

He has added his name to a number of others in the division who would like to be able to make more personnel changes during games.

"I agree one hundred per cent with these managers who will speak about that, to get five subs," said Ivic. "We have a lot of reasons. We know that this pre-season, it was not a normal pre-season for no one.

"Where you have every second, every three days, a game, you need to have more subs, to protect the players, not to do something else.

"We need to protect the players. If you see, all the teams have a lot of injured players, a lot of injured players. And because of this, it's not some normal period, how it was one year ago when three substitutets is normal and we keep going with this. It's totally different. And I agree with this. If you ask me, I believe that we need to have five subs."

One of Ivic's injured players who recently returned was club captain Troy Deeney, who made his 400th appearance for the club, coming off the bench during the victory over Coventry.

The head coach was pleased with the brief performance of his number nine and is looking forward to working with him during the international break to improve him further.

"There's no question about his quality and about his experience," said Ivic. "When you have one player like Troy who can be one of the strikers and who knows how to play, who knows how to score the goal, who knows what he needs to do in every moment of the game. 

Harrow Times:

"It's not just Troy, there are other guys like Andre Gray who's come back, with the young players like Joao Pedro, and Stipe Perica. You need to to find the balance, we need to find the players who is ready, one hundred percent.

"Troy is now this moment, giving us this what he can. We have two weeks now to work with him and to prepare him to be in a better physical condition, and to be ready to play more."