24 hours from Pyewipe

"Things like that you just cannot understand. There is nothing you can do. The rules are the rules and the players must go." These are the words of the Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez. He is unhappy that one of his players, Javier Mascherano, has been called up by his national team, Argentina, to play a friendly in Egypt next week.

Whenever footballers travel thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches we invariably hear a chorus of bitter howls of protest by managers in the Premier League, whose recent 'Game 39' proposal would mean footballers travelling thousands of miles around the world to play unnecessary extra matches.

And there are already all those lucrative friendlies in the USA, China and the United Arab Emirates. But then the Premier League is full of contradictions. In 1990 England reached the semi-finals of the World Cup. On paper at least, this made them one of the top four teams in the world. Then the Premier League was set up, and they told us it would improve the England team. A decade and a half later, England aren't even one of the top 16 teams in Europe.

The recurring theme among these paradoxes, though, is this notion that footballers shouldn't actually play football very much. Perhaps we need to recognise, however, that in the Premier League football is essentially a distraction from shopping for Aston Martins, getting drunk and crashing them into walls, and doing photoshoots for the 12-page piece in Hello! magazine about your tacky wedding to a temporary pop star with an orange face.

Town have two games this weekend, and by the time they leave the pitch at Wembley next Sunday they will have played eight times in 30 days. Rafael Benítez ought to see how he likes that – and let's not forget that, while Alan Buckley has to choose from a squad of 20, Liverpool currently have ten players out on loan and shirts that go up to 42, 45 and 48. You could choose your lottery numbers from that, be the sole winner on a rollover week, and still have less than the Liverpool squad earns in a week.

It's often overlooked that, beyond Arsenal and Manchester United (and maybe Tottenham when they feel like it), there isn't really that much attractive, skilful football to be seen in the Premier League. It's all about pace, strength and endurance. But if there weren't this obsession with fitness and avoiding 'player burnout', then the top players in England would have to overcome their opponents with passing and ball control instead.

And then maybe, just maybe, the England team really would improve. Although that might take a few less Aston Martins and Hello! weddings as well.

Labels: celebrity, england, fixture congestion, friendlies, game 39, liverpool, premiership, workload

So here we are in the pit of despair. Languishing in the depths, with little cause for hope. Arriving at the lowest and bleakest point in an inevitable sequence of long-term decline set in motion by a critical succession of poor executive decisions and sustained by a culture of churlish support and inflated expectations. But enough about the England team – what are Town's chances of turning the season around?

Watching England began for me as a light relief from the hard slog of supporting Grimsby. After travelling for hours and spending a fortune to watch the Mariners lose 4-0 at Watford or Birmingham, and then feeling miserable as hell for the next week, it was a low-risk emotional investment to watch England on the telly. It was a chance to back a team that might actually win something, and if they didn't, well, it wouldn't hurt like when Town get relegated.

But then I realised why Town would never be as competitive a side again as they were under George Kerr and Dave Booth, when I first started going. TV and attendance money was shared out much more evenly between clubs, and in 1984 we finished fifth in what is now called the Championship. This can never be repeated because the rich clubs decided to keep all the cash by forming the Premiership.

And then, when you're watching England, you're supposed to support players from the Premiership – the very organisation that took the bread from Town's mouth.

Paradoxically, it's also less attractive to watch the national team because it's no longer very different from watching Grimsby. Only a fool would still describe England as "a team that might actually win something". After Israel beat Russia, for example, and England briefly had a chance again to qualify for Euro 2008, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard immediately talked up their chances of winning the tournament.

There were also shades of England in Russell Slade's Mariners team. Specifically, in that season we were awarded about 80 penalties and from only one of them the ball didn't end up in the North Sea.

Most pertinent of all is the issue of management. Managers of both England and Grimsby have to try and motivate players who would sooner be elsewhere – at England, back with their Premiership sides; at Grimsby, with clubs that have nice warm changing rooms and fans who don't jeer every misplaced pass.

And for both teams, of course, the big risk involved in changing managers is that none of the candidates whose names are the first to be mentioned have any interest at all in taking on an impossible job. Martin O'Neill is staying at Villa, Arsene Wenger won't leave Arsenal, and Nigel Clough is having another fine season at Burton Albion.

Labels: booth, clough, england, failure, gerrard, kerr, lampard, managers, o'neill, premiership, slade, wenger

The postal workers are striking; and, as usual, the media are much less concerned with telling us why than with portraying them as selfish, heartless swine whose fight for 18-hour lunch breaks and retirement at 45 on full pay will just be all the sweeter if five-year-old Sophie here in the studio doesn't receive her birthday cards tomorrow.

But changes being imposed at the Post Office could mean the workers end up with no shift patterns at all and just sit at home by the phone every day, waiting to be called in whenever. I did this when I was a factory temp, and it was horrible. Town fans underwent almost the same thing last season, when GTFC and Chester rearranged a postponed fixture at just five days' notice, and even the lady who runs the jacket potato stand couldn't get a babysitter in time.

Occasionally footballers have considered a strike. The issue was simply that their union, the PFA, wanted more of the Premiership's TV money, although I do like the notion of Wayne Rooney and Ashley Cole calling each other "comrade" at England training and taking time out between running round cones to discuss overthrowing the machinery of capitalism and handing the means of production to the oppressed proletariat.

But when top-flight footballers threaten to withdraw their labour it's not that much of a threat, since the England players stage unofficial walkouts several times a year already. Whenever the national team plays a friendly half of them seem to be working on a go-slow protest and the other half have suspiciously phoned in sick.

It says something about the popularity of football, though, that players have considered industrial action as an effective means of bringing about change. You can't really imagine a governing body being brought to its knees and caving in to a list of players' demands in order to head off the chilling danger of an all-out golfers' strike.

Derby County players famously came close to strike action to have Brian Clough reinstated as their manager in 1973. A similar situation was unlikely when Alan Buckley was sacked by tonight's opponents Rochdale in 2003, as the man who has got Town promoted three times is regarded by some Dale fans as one of the worst managers they've had.

But while most managers depend chiefly on money as the key to building a successful team, the most important thing for Buckley is time. And at Rochdale – as well as Lincoln and West Brom, for that matter – he wasn't given enough of it.

Town have to make sure we don't make the same mistake again now. And for that we might need a few striking fans to return to Blundell Park.

Labels: buckley, chester, clough, derby, england, industrial action, lincoln, patience, post office, rochdale, striking, west brom