Eriksson calls for earlier finish to season

After that Pommie-bashing, England coach knows he cannot win battle with the Premiership – but it's good to talk

Last Wednesday's abject defeat at Upton Park was not the only reverse suffered by Sven Goran Eriksson in a dispiriting week. Even as he was expressing a wish for a shorter season in the run-up to next year's European Championship finals, came confirmation that the start of the new Premiership campaign and the date of the Champions' League final will remain unchanged.

The latter decision justifies the Football Association's worst fears of only two- and-a-half weeks between the end of European club football, on Wednesday 26 May, and the first match at Euro 2004, on Saturday 12 June. After taking a squad of weary, injury-prone players to last summer's World Cup finals, they believe a month to be the optimum time for preparation ahead of a major tournament.

"If we have a David Beckham or a Michael Owen only 60 per cent fit, we can't win," was how Eriksson put it on a night when "can't win" seemed to sum up his dilemma in every area. He must now lay aside any patriotic thoughts on behalf of his adopted country and hope that no English clubs get anywhere near the final of the Champions' League next season. It would be unwise, however, to say so when meeting the leading club managers and the Premier League chairman Dave Richards next month to thrash out the continuing conflict between different vested interests. The best the England coach can hope for is that Richards will agree to finish the League season at least a week earlier; that ought theoretically to be possible, since the number of Champions' League rounds after Christmas will be reduced from nine (including the final) this year to seven, by the abolition of a second group phase.

In trying to keep the leading clubs onside, one of Eriksson's few negotiating options will be the international date in the last week of April this year, a week before the Champions' League semi- finals and the climax to the Premiership. Having sensibly declined to play a friendly, as part of a sop to the clubs, Eriksson may now be prepared to forgo the alternative of a squad get-together, which he is perfectly entitled to demand. A final decision on that is due to be made after the forthcoming Euro 2004 matches against Liechtenstein and Turkey.

Pessimists might suggest that if those games are not both won, then all talk of preparing for the finals will be academic. That would be an exaggeration; Turkey would certainly become favourites to win the group, but neither Macedonia (who were unable to win in Liechtenstein) nor Slovakia (without a point from two games) have proved they can finish above England.

The news the clubs will not be pleased to hear is that England are to play a friendly on Wednesday 20 August, in between the first and second Saturdays of the new Premiership campaign. Eriksson regards that as important preparation for the three remaining qualifying matches next autumn, two of which take place in early September. He must therefore decide whether it is really feasible to stick with Wednesday's flawed masterplan of 11 substitutions, a policy that has contributed to three of the four defeats (at home to Holland, Italy and Australia) during his 24 matches in charge.

So far, at least, the coach is not for turning. "I will always defend that decision," he said, after suffering a result that makes his percentage record (58 per cent) worse than Graham Taylor's (59), and better than only Don Revie's (56) and Kevin Keegan's (52) of England's 10 full-time managers. "Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so. We have a big problem in this country and many others that the fixtures are too compact in a short period. It's in the clubs' interests and in my interests to protect the players. If you are one of the top players playing in the FA Cup, the League, the Champions' League and then you have to play 90 minutes in a friendly as well, I don't think it's fair. When you play Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday, the injury risk is obvious."

Coaches of other international sides on Wednesday took the same view only as far as Arsenal and Manchester United players were concerned. France's Jacques Santini used Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires and Sylvain Wiltord for only one half of the unexpected home defeat by the Czech Republic, and their Arsenal team-mate Thierry Henry for 65 minutes. Holland's Dick Advocaat reluctantly pulled United's Ruud van Nistelrooy off at half-time against Argentina, but was annoyed his club-mate Juan Sebastian Veron stayed on 30 minutes longer for the opposition. Australia's coach Frank Farina said all the managers he dealt with had been "fantastic" (he has no Arsenal or United players), which prompted him to give Mark Viduka and Paul Okon of Leeds almost a full game – Viduka is suspended for today's FA Cup tie – while restricting Harry Kewell (who played with his club's blessing) to just under an hour.

Eriksson is being urged from most quarters to take on the leading managers, but he is shrewd enough to realise he cannot win a war with the clubs and would be foolish to start one. He lost a telling skirmish when Liverpool's Gérard Houllier refused to let Steven Gerrard go to the World Cup finals, and another one when Sir Alex Ferguson withdrew the "injured" Paul Scholes from a friendly against Portugal and promptly played him against Middlesbrough. Hence the Swede's brave, if unconvincing insistence that what is best for the players is best for him as well as the clubs, and that it was his idea alone that nobody should be subject to more than 45 minutes' action.

"We have to sit down and talk," he said of next month's meeting, which will also be attended by the FA's acting joint chief executive David Davies. "I'm asking to stop the season one week earlier. But I under-stand those above me in that matter. It's not easy to fit in all the games. It would be nice to have a better solution but I don't."

He needs Davies' help, and the committed support of Sir Bobby Robson and Terry Venables, who have both been in the same boat as England managers, to encourage the others in finding one before public sympathy is eroded altogether. "If you want to blame somebody, blame me" was the self-flagellating parting shot on Wednesday. The queue to do so was forming in the £32 seats at Upton Park and the press box beneath them long before the half-time whistle blew, and shows no sign of shortening.

Key dates

29 March Liechtenstein v England. 2 April England v Turkey. 29-30 April Squad get-together (possible). 22 May South Africa v England. 4 June England v Serbia-Montenegro (tbc). 11 June England v Slovakia. 16 August Premiership begins. 20 Aug England v Croatia (tbc). 6 Sept Macedonia v England. 10 Sept England v Liechtenstein. 11 Oct Turkey v England.