It mightn’t have been quite a “watch out or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes” style warning but nevertheless Spurs boss Martin Jol has laid down the law to international managers, and England boss Steve McLaren in particular, that he will not agree to any of his players playing for their country at all if they haven’t been fit enough to pull on a Spurs jersey.

Spurs injury woes have been growing over the past few weeks as Aaron Lennon broke down in training, Dimitar Berbatov was injured on international dutywith Bulgaria, Jermain Defoe was injured this week and captain Ledley King also broke down in training after recently returning from a long term injury which kept him out of the World Cup reckoning.

It’s mainly Defoe and King that Jol has warned McLaren about using as he doesn’t want any outside influences to ruin Spurs chances of getting their experienced Premiership performers fit and back in the side as they now look to buld on their UEFA Cup win over Slavia Prague.

Defoe would be an obvious worry as he has played a regular part under Steve McLaren with Michael Owen injured and Wayne Rooney suspended and with Rooney’s return to the squad now it is Darren bent who drops to the U21 squad and not Defoe. John Terry’s recent injury problems would probably have also given Ledley King more of a chance of playing for his country but Jol is adamant that if a player can’t turn out for the club then they can’t turn out for their country either.

It’s rapidly getting to a point whereby clubs will demand compensation from the national associations if they release players for international duty and could be in for massive compensation claims if the player gets injured. Michael Owen is a prominent case in point where he went to the World Cup after only a handful of matches last season for his new club Newcastle United and got even more badly injured, keeping him out for the majority of this season as well at St. James’ Park.

With club managers’ jobs getting put under threat with only a few negative results it’s little surprise that they are a lot more worried about the club game than international qualifiers, especially England’s games for a Dutchman like Martin Jol.

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