To save you all from playing Miss Marple and to counter some disappointing comments, I will explain the strategy behind this.
Tom elected to put 2 CFs (JM & JV) on the bench so he could play with a front two under various pre-empted/considered scenarios.
Going into the game, we all knew JV was load-compromised, and anything above 30 minutes had increased risk, but under the most likely scenarios, this was enough to warrant a spot in the 18.
Knowing a second ‘half’ is somewhere IRO 49-58 minutes, the enforced change with only 5 minutes on the clock (when RH was injured), Tom opted (rightly IMO) to use JM as his like-for-like change.
As the game developed, the two #9s scenario was never executed (or required). Also, given the profile of 1 (forced), 1 (tactical) then + 1 substitutes, the final change (HA for TB) was aimed at maintaining overall aerial profile (to deal with the inevitable ‘Alamo’ - which we had seen LJ use in the past) but have a fresh ‘ball handler’ to retain the ball when we did have possession.
Should Tom have opted to make 2 changes in his final round of substitutions (eg JM for JV), we would have lowered the team total aerial profile.
The only other way to have done this, was JV on at 50 and then back off at 80, but this would have used a substitute that we may have wished to have used differently should the game have taken an alternative pattern.
Hopefully puts a few conspiracy theories to bed.