How did our internationals get on?
I hate international weeks. I hate the lack of club football. I'm not overly interested in England or any international results for that matter.
Me being English, I'm not that concerned with results of other teams and after the whole debacle and attitude of the players at the World Cup in 2010 it will take me some time before I feel I can get behind the England national team again. It's sad, but I just can't get behind them.
Still at least it's all over now for a month or so and we can return to club football for a few weeks at least. We can start to look forward to a quick reunion with a recently departed friend in the form of Joey Barton when we travel to QPR on Monday night.
Has the international break helped us though? Has it hindered us? Have we picked up any injuries? Or was there any outstanding performances from any of our players whilst they were on international duty with their respective nations? Let's take a look.
Tim Krul failed to see any action for Holland during the international break. He was an unused substitute for the 11-0 (not a typo) victory over San Marino and didn't even make the matchday 18 for the game against Finland last night.
Yohan Cabaye did manage to add to his haul of international caps however. He was an unused substitute for French against Albania although he did start against Romania before being withdrawn after 75 minutes.
Cheik Tiote played the full 90 minutes for Ivory Coast as they put five past Rwanda. That was back on Saturday though so Cheik will have had plenty of time to rest up. the run out would have done him the world of good aswell to be fair.
Jonas Gutierrez played just over 20 minutes for Argentina as they beat Nigeria 3-1 in Dhaka. Spiderman came off the bench around the 68 minute mark and came through the game unscathed despite some "committed" tackles from Nigeria.
Jóan Símun Edmundsson added another two international caps to his collection as he played the full 90 minutes in the the 1-0 defeat to Italy and the 3-1 defeat to Serbia. That makes it 12 caps already for the 20-year-old, although with the greatest of respect I feel that we could probably assemble an NUFC Blog XI and earn some call ups to their team.
Davide Santon captained the Italy U-21s as they beat Tamas Kadar and his Hungary U-21 colleagues 3-0. The result wasn't the only contrast for the pair of youngsters either. Whilst Santon played the full 90 minutes and grabbed himself an assist, Kadar was replaced after the hour mark and had already picked up a yellow card..... for a challenge on Santon.
Shane Ferguson played the full 90 for the Northern Ireland U-21s in their 3-0 loss against Denmark while Dan Gosling managed to make a full debut for the England U-21s. Gosling managed just over an hour of the 4-1 victory over Israel at Oakwell on Monday evening. He played well and was unlucky not to be on the scoresheet.
That just about rounds up all of our players who were involved in the international fixtures anyway. The best part about the whole thing is that there were no injuries picked by anyone which is a bonus. My paranoia about injuries on international duty also contributes to why I don't like the international breaks. Blame Micheal Owen for that though.
Roll on Monday!
