Sheffield United got lucky but English football needs to treat its winter break more seriously - Stuart Rayner

If you do not support a Premier League team, you might not even realise there is a winter break – of sorts – happening this month.

Sheffield United are one of 10 teams taking this weekend off, the others the weekend after. It has been engineered to leave 10 matches in that period all live on television, with none in that awkward Saturday 3pm slot – you know, when English matches are supposed to be played.

Football League clubs plough on regardless.

Premier League players get a fortnight off playing, give or take – unless they are at one of the seven clubs taken to FA Cup replays played between those weekends.

It was even more reason for Sheffield United to be relieved not to be taken to a third-round replay by League Two Gillingham.

A winter break is needed. One only needs to look at Tuesday's League Cup semi-final first leg between Middlesbrough and Chelsea with 22 players missing and two more from Boro going off with first-half injuries to see we are asking too much of top players.

And this is a major tournament summer, when we want players as close as possible to their best in June/July to go the extra mile then.

At least the England captain, Harry Kane, is playing in Germany, where players are treated a bit less like very expensive cattle. Kane's last Bundesliga game was on December 20, and his next is not until Friday, although he did have a 67-minute run-out against Basle in a friendly last week.

Jude Bellingham's Real Madrid had a fortnight off for Christmas.

Spain and Germany take Christmas and New Year off, which is not acceptable in England, where Boxing Day and New Year's Day football is such a part of our culture.

Likewise, it will be a sad day when FA Cup replays come to an end. It might well only be weeks away.

An FA Cup third round at the start of January and fourth round at the end is another tradition.

But something has to give and at the moment it is the players' bodies. That is not right.

By shoving replays into the break, the Football Association is undermining both the winter break to aid its national team and its cup competition's own replays.

Winter breaks must be sacrosanct with no competitive matches played in them, and no games at all in the first week. Delaying them until after the Festive programme makes sense, even more so in a January like this one which clashes with the African Cup of Nations and Asian Cup. If it means a different slot for the FA Cup third and/or fourth round, so be it.

As for replays, why should non-league Eastleigh or Bolton Wanderers, with all their financial problems of recent years, be denied one because it does not suit the bigger clubs?

Why not introduce a rule where games go to replays unless both sides agree before kick-off they would rather settle it on the day?

Compromises on replays might be the only way forward. Compromise should not come into it on much-needed rest periods.