Rodriguez game time bad news for Everton

James Rodriguez played the full 90 minutes of Colombia’s 0-3 defeat to Uruguay on Friday, which is not good news for Everton when the Premier League returns next weekend.

Colombia were well beaten by their continental rivals and Rodriguez’s Everton team mate Yerry Mina was sent off as well to complete a miserable night for the South Americans.

However, the most irritating aspect of this is that the Toffees star forward played yet another full match, which will do his recovery from the injury he suffered in the Merseyside derby back in October, no good at all.

The former Real Madrid star got through the whole match but again he looked jaded and well below his best as he has in recent games for Everton.

This situation is exactly what the Blues and Rodriguez didn’t need. More internationals halfway across the World and then back to Europe just in time for the run-up to a Premier League match that is now becoming an essential win for Everton to get their crumbling season back on track.

Colombia have another fixture to play on Tuesday. If he plays another full 90 minutes, it will become increasingly impossible for the 29-year-old to ever get back to full fitness when he’s constantly playing at less than 100% week in, week out.

In truth all these internationals are a real pain and in an ideal scenario I would really rather that the international calendar was suspended until this season is done.

Then he’d have been able to take a full week off, rest, get properly over his knock and then back to the peak level we saw in the first four games of the season. That’s the James Rodriguez we want and need to see again.

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It does seem especially perverse though that there are international friendlies being squeezed into such a congested campaign when there are also plenty of World Cup and European Championship qualifiers to get on with.

England’s pretty pointless game against the Republic of Ireland on Thursday is a case in point.

It proved nothing other than the fact that England can and should, comfortably beat much weaker and inexperienced opposition such as Ireland’s young team – something we knew anyway.

The must important aspect of that game for Everton supporters, apart from Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s fine performance and goal, was that Seamus Coleman aggravated his own injury problem in training before the match and might not now be fit for the Fulham match.

I think all this fixture overload is beginning to hurt the Blues season. We now have to hope and pray again that Rodriguez won’t feel any further after-affects from his own international exertions when he comes back and end up missing that Fulham game as well.