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Morecambe's star defender David Artell on the prospect of making the Johnstone's Paint Trophy final at Wembley, clear-the-air talks with the manager and why talk of winter breaks are just nonsense

We are now only two games away from returning to Wembley after our area semi-final win over Bury in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy. It wasn't one for the purists as the weather conditions were atrocious so much so that the kick off got delayed because of lightning! The wind and rain made it very difficult to play much football and it was a case of rolling up your sleeves and grinding out a result. The game between Yeovil and Walsall on Tuesday night seemed to be a touch farcical due to the wind too with a Clayton Ince goal kick going out for a corner. Wind is certainly the most hated weather condition amongst footballers as its very difficult to assess the flight of the football when its coming towards you and can easily be blown away from you. I've actually had a game abandoned due to the wind because the ball would not stay still to allow free kicks and goal kicks to take place. Even when the goalkeeper put a divot of grass behind the ball it would just blow over it, it was that bad.

I suppose conditions such as these add credence to the posse of managers calling for a winter break. Sven Goran Eriksson is the latest manager to call for one but I find it incredible that Premiership managers have the audacity to do so when they have a squad of 30+ senior professionals. I could understand lower league managers doing so because teams have smaller squads and a couple of injuries/suspensions/illnesses over the Christmas period could deplete a squad but that just doesn't happen at Premiership level. At the end of the day we are in the entertainment industry and people want to see football every week, especially over the festive period, and tiredness of the players and the weather is no excuse to have three weeks off. You get the odd game that is spoilt because of the weather but not over a sustained period to justify a winter break. Can you imagine a builder asking his boss for three weeks off because he's feeling tired and it's too cold? Me neither.

Jermaine Defoe has this week been told by Juande Ramos he can leave Spurs. He actually thought he was going to be told he was starting against Arsenal. Its not usually good news when you are called into the manager's office. It's petrifying when you're younger and there's still that fear factor when you get older, and so there should be because every player should fear there manager slightly. Knocking on the manager's door off your own back, when you're not playing for example, is equally frightening as you have all these points that you want to make as to why you should be playing but you come out of the office ten minutes later wondering why you went in there in the first place. The best talking any player can do is on the pitch and no matter how much a manager likes or dislikes you if you're playing well there's nothing much to say between you.

There may well be some added spice between the players of Manchester United and Newcastle before this weekend's game due to Mikael Silvestre's comments about Joey Barton. Silvestre says that Barton 'should not have been allowed to stay in the game for what he did' (to Ousmane Dabo who is a close friend of Silvestre).

Personally I don't think fellow professionals should cast judgement on each other. We all have opinions on Joey Barton but I wouldn't criticise a fellow professional in print for two reasons; you might play against them in the future and you don't want them to have any added significance and secondly, football has an awful habit of kicking you in the proverbials when you least expect it and the person you have criticised might just be able to gloat. Even if Nigel Pearson gets a reaction from his players after Sam Allardyce's departure I don't think they will have enough about them to beat Manchester United. The best on offer though looks to be a Manchester United clean sheet, currently available at [1.79].

David Artell plays for Morecambe FC:

http://www.morecambefc.com/