Yet another international break has come and almost gone, carelessly drilling yet another two-week hole in the fixture list and leaving us all twiddling our thumbs and staring out of the window in the absence of proper football.
And also, I don’t mind saying, feeling slightly picked-upon because this sort of thing seems to be happening quite a lot at the moment. Wasn't there one of these dire interludes just a month ago, in September? And isn’t there due to be another one in as little as a month’s time, in November?
I’ve just checked and, incredibly, it seems that there is. Who benefits?
Roy Hodgson, I suppose, for one – although you could argue that even he normally doesn’t end up enjoying the fortnight as much as he probably hoped he would. (There were six points in this one for Roy, it’s true, but for that he had to sit through two games of nearly unwatchably boring football, and then endure a tiresome re-ignition of the ‘club v. country’ debate, in the form of the tiredness, or otherwise, of Raheem Sterling. Sometimes you have to think that even Roy Hodgson can’t look forward to the international break.)
Any other plausible beneficiaries?
Well, the interval created, I suppose, a handy news vacuum into which, say, a cricketer might release a volume of autobiography or in which Roy Keane might find himself generating copious headlines by going public with various ancient, trusty rifts and also by the simpler means of shaving off a beard.
And, beyond Keane and KP, I suppose there could equally well have been some profitable way for the rest of us to spend this enforced, football-free purgatory – this period when the things we prefer to think about weren’t there to be thought about. It would have been the perfect time, on reflection, to learn to play the trombone, say, or to master basket-weaving or to redecorate the bathroom, or something constructive along those lines.
In which case, personally, I can’t help feeling that I rather squandered an opportunity, having spent the deserted fortnight learning precisely no new musical instruments, mastering precisely no new time-honoured artisanal skills and leaving the walls of the bathroom precisely alone. Instead (in common with many in this region, I imagine), I seem to have filled the fortnight with fretting about Diego Costa ’s hamstrings and wanting to know that they were safely delivered from Spain. (Needless worrying, as it turned out: the news is they have been returned in workable condition, the best of the week's headlines, in my opinion.)
But aside from the stark and persistent low-level fear of losing one of your key talents to a loose challenge somewhere in Slovenia, it’s the loss of momentum that one mostly worries about. Everyone agrees that momentum is the key for a team that’s serious about doing well in the league. And everyone agrees that momentum is something our current team has been showing impressive signs of achieving in these opening weeks. But just when the momentum seems to be building nicely in your favour, the season has to stop – not once, but twice and, soon, a third time.
Talk about frustrating. You’re trying to get on with something and the doorbell keeps going. And every time it’s Roy Hodgson. And every time he’s come round to ask if he can borrow Gary Cahill .
And we smile weakly and once again hand him Gary Cahill , because obviously that's the neighbourly thing to do. But deep down inside, we're thinking, 'Get your own Gary Cahill .'
Of course, as we know, that frustration can be channelled in a good way. Our team’s response to being rudely interrupted by an international break last time around was to regroup and put four goals past Swansea. You just have to hope that something of the same pent-up irritation is released at Crystal Palace on Saturday.
After all, it’s the mark of a title-worthy team that it can survive the ceaseless distractions thrown into its path by the international football schedule. And it’s a mark of the title-worthy supporter as well.
None of my business, of course, but I did find the fuss generated by Roy Keane about our manager’s shake-of-hands at the end of the Aston Villa match a little hard to comprehend. Last season, Paul Lambert, the Villa manager, complained because of the perceived absence of a handshake; this time the complaints are all because he was offered one. It seems as though you’re damned if you don’t and damned if you do.
And what a minefield for etiquette it turns out to be, down there around the technical areas. Managers must constantly feel like they’re sitting at the table at an extremely posh dinner, and worrying about picking up the wrong spoon for the soup.
At least when football comes back, it comes back properly: the Premier League game against Palace on Saturday is quickly followed by the Champions League match against Maribor at home on Tuesday night.
Straight back into the proper rhythm of things, then, which is a consolation of sorts. Who knows? This time next week, it could almost be as though football had never gone away.
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