Michael Laudrup has been diplomatic this week but now is the time to bin international friendlies and reduce the number of games that our top stars are playing.

I have long since believed that the international week right at the start of the season is the most pointless date ever put onto the calendar. To see players disappearing for international games either - as was this season - just before the season starts or after the opening 1 or 2 games is so irritating and how many players have a staggered start to their league campaigns as a result?

I was more frustrated to watch Chris Coleman decide to give both Ashley Williams and Ben Davies the full 90 minutes against the Irish just three days before we were ready to entertain Man Utd at the Liberty. Come on Chris, it's taken over 100 years to get two Welsh sides into the top flight at least give them the favours that you seem to afford other managers.

And now we have Ashley Williams staying at home as a precaution while the Swans travel to Romania for their sixth game of what is already promising to be a very long season. When we return we travel to West Brom on Sunday and then it's international break again as our stars travel around the world.

“That was the past. It was a friendly game and I don’t want to have any problems now because we can’t turn back the clock,” Laudrup said.

“The next two breaks will be qualifiers which will be different so I don’t see any necessity to turn back the clock and say something which means someone else has to say something back and we end up in a debate. It’s happened, it is how it is and we have to move on.

“But we have to manage them carefully. Hopefully tomorrow can finish work we started last Thursday and go into the group stage where we aimed for. That means there will be six Thursday games for us, three like this one where we come back late at night with not a lot of time to recover.

“But we want to have this so it is up to me to think about the players and know that it is not just about this game and the weekend, it is about having a larger perspective.

“Of course, when you are national coach you have six or seven games a year where you just need your players there. We all have our interests.

“I have said before it’s great a small club like ours have so many internationals but there is always a price to pay. Our job is to try and manage it.”

You can sense the frustration in Laudrup's words about this especially as he tries to mastermind a successful Swansea European campaign. Qualifiers for World Cups are one thing but FIFA and UEFA seem adamant at times of getting in more dates and it is just to the detriment of the players rather than the benefit of them. That is why it is time to call and end to these games and save internationals for qualifying dates only and certainly at times when those qualifying dates are so frequent anyway.

Thankfully we will finish the European job this evening or is this just another price of success?

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