CandH’s top blogger Allen Cummings is a peaceful and reasonable soul but he has something very much on his mind and pours it all out here.
International breaks ? I hate them especially in the present climate.
We should all be looking forward to another productive Premier League weekend instead of clicking our heels for a further 10 days.
Who was bothered enough to watch the England match on Thursday evening, or will be making arrangements around the game on Sunday? I certainly wasn’t – or won’t be!
Maybe it’s because I’m from a certain era – a time when wearing the shirt and playing for your country really meant something to those who were lucky or truly good enough to have that honour bestowed upon them.
In those days it felt like players would have turned out for free if they’d been asked. In contrast to the sums paid out to today’s international call-ups, the chosen ones in that bygone era virtually did play for nothing.
I believe our World Cup winners in 1966 each received a bonus of just £1000 for carrying off the biggest prize in world football.
Imagine what today’s crop would expect if they achieved the same. On the other hand that’s a pointless exercise because it’s never going to happen!
Two players sent home from the previous international call-up. Three others this time in disgrace. The whole thing is a farce. Club football most certainly IS NOT!
Why the concern with international football on what is mainly a West Ham United forum? It’s because Arthur Masuaku has picked up an injury and may or may not be available on a weekend when in all truth we should be going in search of our third straight win in the Premier League, and that hasn’t happened too often.
We would all surely have preferred to be looking to capitalise on our dramatic upsurge in form and fortune, revelling in the fact we have scored seven goals without reply and collected six points from two games.
The last thing we wanted right now was an enforced, two-week break. The squad that has ‘come together’ so brilliantly, being split-up with players travelling off, home and abroad, to join up with others outside their usual ‘bubble’. And worst of all Arthur injured!
Players are also being exposed to the threat of an infection they have so carefully been protected against by their clubs.
Why on earth the football authorities, or even the government, would be sanctioning the kind of global travel us mere members of the public have been urged to abandon for the foreseeable future, is way beyond me! And for what?
In England’s case a meaningless friendly with Wales, followed by visits from Belgium, a country in a far worse position than us with escalating virus cases, and then Denmark – in a competition already delayed a year because of the global pandemic – and the way things are going, could be heading to be put on hold again if things continue to deteriorate further.
Last time Tomas Soucek returned from international duty and found himself having to quarantine after testing positive for the virus.
What’s to say that wont happen again to someone else? Plus of course the usual threat of picking up niggling injuries. Instead of whetting our lips at the thought of going to face that arrogant lot over in north London and coming away with another hugely satisfying victory, we’re having to keep our fingers and toes and any other extremities firmly crossed.
We were on a roll – the last thing we needed was for the brakes to go on!
Unfounded, made up accusations about players getting paid to play for the England. Yes, they get paid but all goes to charity.
Don’t get how someone can have such a high conviction opinion based on something not true.
In your haste to disagree you missed the whole point Jim. Should INTERNATIONAL football be going ahead in the current climate?
100% agree. Okay, domestic football is allowed to go ahead but why international football is even being considered is beyond me!!
I believe Declan Rice would leave to play European football if he wasn’t getting international play. It is an opinion, not a statement of fact, and cannot be substantiated. But I was young once, and playing for country would have been an honour that little else could equal.
I remember (unfortunately) England’s World Cup 1974 Qualifying Group only had 3 teams, so just 4 games ..
Of course playing for your country is a great honour, but seriously, with people testing positive left right & centre, playing these international games is insane, weeks & weeks of preparation by PL clubs to get the Prem restarted only to flush it all down the pan by sending these players off to different parts of the world for pointless matches, international football should have been suspended till its safe because domestic football is going to suffer