SEPT 5 — The knee injury suffered by Michael Dawson during England’s 4-0 victory over Bulgaria on Friday night offers another latest illustration of why so many Premier League managers and clubs have such a deep loathing of international football.

Spurs defender Dawson will be sidelined for an estimated six to eight weeks, meaning he will miss his club’s Champions’ League games against Werder Bremen, FC Twente and Inter Milan, along with six or seven Premier League fixtures including meetings with Manchester United and Aston Villa.

Spurs may receive a payout from their insurers and some compensation from the Football Association (who preside over the international team and are therefore culpable for his injury, as Dawson was in their care when it happened) but in no way will it make up for the millions that Spurs stand to lose if their performances dip during Dawson’s absence and they resultantly miss out on a place in the knock-out stage of the Champions’ League.

Of course, Dawson’s international-induced absence is nothing new. Last season, for example, Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie missed the majority of the campaign after being injured during an international friendly with the Netherlands. And who knows whether Arsenal might have won the Premier League if Van Persie had been available throughout the campaign?

The potential of key players suffering injury whilst on international duty could be regarded as an unavoidable peril of being a major club. If you’re a big enough club, your squad will inevitably contain a large proportion of players who are selected to play for their countries; from time to time, some of them will inevitably get injured. It’s just part of the game, and should be accepted as such.

But that’s not how clubs see it. In this instance, Spurs would quite reasonably argue that they pay Michael Dawson’s wages, so why should they allow his fitness to be endangered by playing in an international match which ultimately has nothing to do with them?

I know from personal experience just how frustrating and evocative an issue this can be. While I was at Reading, I have no doubt whatsoever that one of the key factors in our relegation from the Premier League in 2007/8 was the damage caused to our players during international fixtures at key times of the season.

Towards the start of the campaign, for example, we played away at Bolton three days after a full international calendar. Our left back and best player, Nicky Shorey, had played for England against Germany in a meaningless friendly at Wembley, where he suffered an injury that kept him out of the game at Bolton. He was replaced by a 19-year-old making his debut (Scott Golbourne). We lost 3-0.

A couple of months later, our hard-working striker Kevin Doyle (now at Wolves) played exhausting back-to-back games for Ireland and was so fatigued when he returned that our manager, Steve Coppell, decided he wasn’t fit enough to start in the game at Blackburn two days later. We lost 4-2.

Throughout that 2007/8 season there were countless more examples of important players being adversely affected by their exertions in international games and, while there’s no guarantee that we would have gathered any more points if they’d been fully fit, when we suffered relegation on goal difference at the end of the season the impact of those international fixtures — games that we really couldn’t care less about — left a sour taste in the mouth.

It’s not just the injuries that are irksome. Even when players come through games unscathed, international breaks are nothing but a hugely disruptive nuisance for clubs. Training grounds become deserted with training sessions featuring only the five or six fringe players who have been left behind. Managers are utterly unable to plan for their next game because they don’t know who will be fit, or sometimes even (particularly in the case some African nations) when they will actually return.

This may seem all rather petty — why should it matter if clubs get a bit hacked off when their players get tired or injured in international games? Actually, it does matter because clubs are both increasingly running the structure of football and becoming increasingly reluctant to release their players for international duty.

It’s not far-fetched to suggest that the time will soon come when a powerful group of clubs gang together and defy the commands of FIFA by banning their players from appearing on the international stage. Imagine Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich simultaneously announcing that none of their players are available for international selection. Imagine a Spain team without any Barcelona players.

The very existence of international football would be under threat. FIFA and the continental federations would inevitably impose sanctions, vowing to ban offending clubs from the Champions’ League and other prestigious club competitions.

So now imagine a Champions’ League Final contested between Fulham and Sampdoria because none of the biggest clubs have entered. And then those excluded big clubs would set up their own competition — the World Football Series, perhaps — and possibly even withdraw from their own domestic leagues for good. No more Premier League, no more La Liga, no more Serie A.

Of course, I’m starting to stretch the point now, but only a little. The situation needs to be properly addressed by FIFA before the clubs address it for them. A very minor start has been made with the shift of international fixtures to Friday and Tuesday instead of Saturday and Wednesday, providing players with an extra day of recuperation once they return to their clubs.

But that’s nowhere near enough to satisfy the clubs. Now FIFA needs to take more drastic steps including a significant reduction in the number of international fixtures and the introduction of a meaningful compensation system when players get injured.

The problem is that FIFA is reluctant to make these changes because it would affect their income. Less international fixtures means less TV revenue and less sponsorship money.

More compensation to clubs would have to come out of the coffers of the national federations, some of whom can’t afford it. But it’s a growing problem, and one that won’t go away — just ask Michael Dawson.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.