Glenn Roeder has criticised fixture congestion with the Toon playing 3 games in 6days. During the interview he made the following remarks - “we are competing in 4 competitions this year” and “We don’t have the size of squad required to be successful in those competitions”

After all of the hype at the end of last season and the effort put in by our guys it appears that the UEFA Cup is now an inconvenience.

How could this little problem have been avoided?

1, Not qualifying for Europe would have helped.

or

2, Buying more players would increase the size of the squad.

I kinda get the impression Roeder might have had something to do with both items 1 and 2, so its a bit late for him to start bitching about it.

I consider such competitions to be a natural form of handicap.

If you have qualified for Europe it would suggest that your team is half decent, better than the others in the league, so if you have to play a few more games, suffer a few more injuries and end up with a few more tired legs, then that evens it out a bit for the rest of them.

As a further handicap how about playing all Internationals midweek too, and as a result not interrupting the domestic schedule? Gets rid of all that nasty congestion, and adds a little further hadicapping for all of those mega teams who field nine or ten internationals every week.

Just a thought.

Archie Brand
Bahrain