Postponements due to Queen Elizabeth II's death highlight football's lack of fixture list wriggle room

Sometimes there are events you just have to react to. The debate over whether this was one is already underway.

Such is the improved quality of pitches across football in the Premier League era, weather-related postponements are becoming increasingly rare. But as climate change throws up ever more freak weather events, that could change.

Despite what some people might say, Covid-19 is not over. Another spike in the winter cannot be ruled out.

Already this season we have seen three Coventry City matches – including one against Rotherham United – postponed after cramming the Commonwealth Games rugby sevens tournament into a weekend churned up the pitch to the point of it being unsafe.Then there are events like Thursday.

It shows why there needs to be wriggle room in the system but in a season which has been extended by two weeks to make space for a six-week World Cup in November/December, there is very little – at least for some.

Leagues One and Two should not have too much of a problem as they play on through the Qatar jamboree; the Championship takes a break only for the group stages.

Most Premier League clubs, including Leeds United, will have plenty of midweek slots they can fill.

The problem is the clubs involved in the exhaustive Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League, which take up so many midweek slots that the second round of the League Cup was in August but there is no room for the third to be played until November.

In recent years, plenty of English teams have been in the habit of going very deep in these competitions. And it is not just them, but their opponents, who are affected. Leeds are due to be at Manchester United on September 18, still in the official mourning period.

Of course "no room for more games" talk is slightly misleading, based on the idea that professional teams can only play once every couple of days. History, end-of-season Sunday League fixture lists and logic tell us this is not the case, but the damage of squeezing too much in cannot be discounted.Hull City and Sheffield United both have worryingly long injury lists already this season.

This week I asked their managers why.

"From July 30 to September 4 we played nine games," Hull coach Shota Arveladze pointed out.

"That's a minimum of nine days off, nine matchdays, add nine preparation days before each match and that's already 27 days out of 35.

"We've investigated, we've spoken to the boys about it but it's happened. We are thinking about it and we're doing things differently.

"One day makes a lot of difference. Having four days between games is totally different to three - those extra 24 hours really allow legs to recover, especially for young players."

His Blades counterpart Paul Heckingbottom was in complete agreement.

"I think it's a fact we're going to get injuries from the workload," he said. "You don't get a chance to train, it's play, recover, play, recover. We play in an aggressive fashion – do we want to tell players not to run about and lose? No, we're going to run, we're going to fight and scrap and sometimes injuries are a consequence."

We have seen other sportsmen, such as Ben Stokes, reach breaking point. For years Roger Federer and the Williams sisters have been picking their tennis tournaments. Football is heading down the same route and seems unwilling to apply the brakes.

Hopefully football can resume as soon as possible for those that want it – by all means give refunds to those with tickets who do not – to help the mood of the nation as it did in 2020. But that is not the real issue here. This is yet another wake-up call for the game.