Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has my sympathy, fixture schedule is unfair - Sue Smith

Physically and mentally, some clubs will be crying out for it. Others would probably rather keep playing.

After their 3-0 win in last week’s South Yorkshire derby, you would probably have put Rotherham United in the latter category, whereas Sheffield Wednesday would have been glad to recharge their batteries.

Seven days later I was at the New York Stadium to see a Millers team who looked like they had hit the buffers.

Not long after I arrived, news came through that the Owls’ 12-point deduction for financial breaches had been halved, less than 24 hours after beating Bournemouth. It just shows the rapid mood swings of a Championship season.

The fixture schedule is absolutely ruthless at the best of times, and even tougher now. It is not too different from what top Premier League clubs face in Europe, but they have the squads to cope. I feel for high-tempo teams like Rotherham with far smaller budgets.

Manager Paul Warne pointed to second-half fatigue when he spoke to me after the 1-0 defeat against Luton and Hull City’s Grant McCann raised similar concerns the previous weekend.

Injuries are starting to stack up at the New York Stadium, where Joe Mattock went off injured inside the first 20 minutes. Clark Robertson and Billy Jones, two alternatives at left-back, were already out, so Ben Wiles had to move from his attacking midfield role.

There was a time in my career when I suffered from plantar fasciitis – an inflammation of the foot from playing on hard ground. It never stopped me playing but it really hurt and the less recovery time between games, the worse it was.

Before one game, I limped through the start of the warm-up. Players carrying minor problems will be happy to get their bodies right if they are not on international duty.

I cannot remember the last time I covered a match between two fully-fit squads.

Some have called for a return to the five substitutes we saw in the restarted 2019-20 and still see in European competitions and while I think that favours the big clubs too much in the Premier League, maybe there is a case for it in the Championship.

You can understand why energy levels might be down, as they seemed to be for Rotherham, and sometimes when the situation is quite intense you just need to mentally switch off for a bit.

Sheffield Wednesday’s players should have had an extra lift this week after picking up nine points in midweek, and their first home win since February. Last week, things were really low, with their losing run stretched to four defeats, no goals in the last three, and injuries and suspensions.

Those problems have not completely gone away, but if they beat Millwall at home today they will be out of the relegation zone for the first time this season. The club believes their misconduct charge should have been thrown out completely, but reducing the punishment allowed them to meet manager Garry Monk’s target of clearing the points deduction before this break.

The tough schedule is probably something we just have to get on with at the moment and the flipside is in the Premier League, where the fatigue and lack of preparation has probably led to lots of goals.

It probably makes club doctors, nutritionists and sports scientists more important than ever, advising players on recovery and what to eat to help their fitness and even boost their immunity.

All managers have to strike a balance between selecting a player and risking losing him for weeks. Last weekend Middlesbrough left Patrick Roberts out of their team to face Cardiff City because the sports scientists identified some muscle fatigue.

If you asked the players – like if you had asked me when I had numerous niggles – they invariably just want to play. It was bad because you are not just risking yourself but also putting your team a player down but we are silly.

I just hope they are buying into it all and that Rotherham’s players in particular make good use of their break.

And then on Saturday we saw this:

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer describing the scheduling of their 3-1 victory over Everton as an “absolute joke”.

United returned from their embarrassing Champions League defeat against Istanbul Basaksehir in the early hours of Thursday morning yet had to kick off at Goodison Park at 12.30pm on Saturday.

Solskjaer said: “How can you expect players to perform to the best of their ability when you send them out at 1230? Absolute joke.

“A month ago we tried to move this game. What sense is there for us to play on a Saturday when we could play on the Sunday and there is an international break afterwards?

“I can’t say enough how hard these times are for everyone, not just footballers, and we want to see football with quality.

“Our players were set up to fail today with the schedule. I pushed my club to really fight the kick-off time on this one to give us at least half a chance but it was quashed.”

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