Town manager Paul Jewell has hit out at the midweek international fixtures which have left his squad for tonight’s Capital One Cup tie against Bristol Rovers short of three players. Damien Delaney is with Ireland for their friendly in Serbia on Wednesday, Ronan Murray with the Irish U21s for their European Championships qualifier against Turkey in Sligo on Tuesday and Josh Carson has been promoted to the Northern Ireland full squad from the U21s for their friendly against Finland in Belfast, also on Wednesday.

Jewell said: “International friendlies in midweek is ridiculous. The one thing that everyone looked forward to was the big build-up [to the season]. It was always a free week, now we’ve got League Cup matches and in the last couple of years there have been internationals.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think everyone involved in football from supporters to players to managers to coaches is thinking ‘Let’s have a free week, let’s have a right good build up so everyone gets excited that we’re playing Blackburn on the Saturday’.

“Now we’ve got a League Cup game tomorrow. We’ve got three players on international duty who won’t get back until Thursday. Becomes a bit of a nonsense in my view.”

He says Town had no choice but to let two of them go, although Delaney might have stayed behind: “We could have said no to Damo because he wasn’t on standby but I wasn’t aware of that until this morning. But the player’s in Ireland, there’s no calling the player back now.

“As for the other two, [Northern Ireland manager] Michael O’Neill called me and said that Josh had been called up to the full squad. Josh came and saw me and said he doesn’t want to harm his place [here], but we have no comebacks from that.

“I think with these friendly games, if the federations paid their wages if they got injured, we’d see a lot fewer friendlies.”

Photo: Action Images

bontcho added 07:31 - Aug 14 I may be wrong but I believe international dates are announced well before the league fixtures do this is the fault of the leagues rather than internationals.
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JimmyJazz added 08:21 - Aug 14 I think starting the league cup (whatever) early is a good thing. Championship teams seem to be playing as strong sides as possible instead of just playing kids as it's almost viewed as the last pre-season fixture
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itfcjoe added 08:59 - Aug 14 Tend to agree with PJ here, friendlies are set by the big European clubs in conjunction with FIFA so us little people fall by the wayside and have to work round them. It's very disruptive to us and a real shame
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Karlosfandangal added 09:16 - Aug 14 Why did they not play the Internationals last week (olympics maybe) or start the season a week later. The Capital One cup had matches played on Friday and Saturday (which I knew nothing about till I looked at the BBC web page) The Charity shield was always the first match of the season that seemed to come and go. If its because of the Olympics (once in a life time) why not start the season later and finish later by say a week or two

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Premierbluez added 09:23 - Aug 14 All the clubs who played their league cup ties already we supposed to play either today (Tuesday) or tomorrow. A number of clubs took up this opportunity provdided by the league cup. Paul Jewell and the Ipswich hierachy have no one they can blame for this situation but themselves. They should have moved the fixture to last Saturday then Josh Carson, Damien Delaney and Ronan Murray would all still have have been available for that game.

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pazelle added 10:31 - Aug 14 Quite Right!
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tsbmumof3 added 12:22 - Aug 14 completely agree with Premierbluez town had the option of switching this game to last saturday so we would have had these players available. could have also made it a real family fun day to promote the club!!!
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delias_cheesy_flaps added 13:10 - Aug 14 For once i find myself totally agreeing with you PJ. Since last season ended some players have had the Euro's and the Olympics to contend with then they have a pointless friendly before the season kicks off a few days later!!
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arc added 13:54 - Aug 14 Of course, this should read: "When asked in a routine pre-match press conference what he thinks of the timing of international friendlies, Paul Jewell answered in a calm and matter-of-fact tone, 'International friendlies in midweek are ridiculous'." But "slammed" makes it so much more exciting... ;-)
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