I WOKE up Sunday morning to four grown men arguing about whether the Premier League has a fixture congestion problem. This argument then spilled over to Twitter and has finally spilled over to the pages of the Morning Star.

It is amusing that while they felt the fixtures were indeed congested, they wouldn’t change too much and even suggested having a match on Christmas Day.

The calls for a winter break to ease the problem on teams in England go back nearly a decade.

This isn’t a new argument and will come up again before the end of the season when English players look shattered ahead of the Euros in France.

It will come up again in the summer when England are knocked out in the quarters, having looked jaded and in need of a rest. So why bring it up now?

Well it has been all over the papers for the past few weeks, starting with Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce complaining that he needed to rest players in the FA Cup because of three away games in the space of a week.

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has been moaning that he has no fit defenders and will have to play kids against Exeter to give his senior players a rest.

When he was at Borussia Dortmund, the winter break was great because it gave his team a much needed break midway through the season and he wants it brought to England.

How did Liverpool get on against Exeter? They drew 2-2. That’s an extra game which Klopp did not want.

I always find it ironic when the “big” teams play weaker teams in the cup. It runs the risk of drawing the game and having a replay. Play a full-strength team and you are more likely to win and that’s one less game to worry about.

Had Liverpool fielded a stronger side, they probably would have won. There was plenty of time to rest players as the game was on Friday and they weren’t playing again until tonight.

That’s four days’ rest. Arsenal would have had three. No excuse to not try to win the game and avoid the replay.

No offence to Allardyce and Sunderland but playing a full-strength team away to Arsenal probably wouldn’t have made that much of a difference.

Especially when their next opponents, Swansea, were playing a day later.

They also benefited from an extra day’s rest, albeit that day would have been spent travelling. However, Swansea were also away so they would have lost a day to travel as well.

Managers that complain about the Saturday-Tuesday schedule, which happens a few times a year, have no real argument. Lower-league teams do it every week with smaller squads.

Not to mention, have you ever heard Arsene Wenger or Louis van Gaal complain about playing away on a Saturday then travelling to Moscow or Rome on a Tuesday for a Champions League match?

No. It doesn’t happen. Teams want to play two games a week if it’s in the Champions League but it somehow becomes a lot harder if you have to stay in the country.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think some aspects of the scheduling need to change. The international game in August makes no sense at all.

The season has just started and all of a sudden players are taken away on international duty.

That there is two weeks lost which theoretically could be used for two Premier League games, easing the pressure later on in the year.

The game between Boxing Day and New Year is also problematic.

If you get rid of the international friendly at the start of the season and move this game there, teams will get a bit of a break around December.

You also have two cup competitions in English football. Let’s be honest, the League Cup is rather pointless. Three or four teams take it seriously.

Losing it would not be the end of the world. Though in saying that, given that most clubs play a weakened side and get knocked out early, it really adds one or two extra games.

Getting rid of the two-leg semi-final makes no sense because that only affects four teams.

So let’s say we get rid of the international friendly and the League Cup or at least the two legs in the semi-final, that still leaves the much-wanted winter break.

The problem I have with people calling for a winter break is that they will use it to go abroad and do extra training or play a high-profile friendly.

Manchester City used a week in January last season, before their FA Cup tie with Middlesbrough, to fly to Abu Dhabi and arrived back 24 hours before the tie.

Needless to say they lost 2-0. Much was made about how reckless it was for the team to travel back so late and how it devalued the competition.

If you give clubs a fortnight or more to rest, teams won’t tell their players to go to a beach and rest up. It will be used as a mid-season tour to cavort with sheikhs and oligarchs.

Don’t believe me? Well Manchester United did it in 2008 and made a documentary of it for their in-house TV channel.

One thing that often gets downplayed is the introduction of Sky Sports and the Premier League itself.

This could be because all the debates about football are on Sky and the ones held on the BBC are on the declining Match of the Day.

The birth of the Premier League in 1992 blew up the whole structure of the game.

I have been raised in the era of Andy Gray and Richard Keys, Martin Tyler and Jeff Stelling, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.

The blue and red of Sky is all I have seen so it is the norm for me.

But I have heard the whispers. Of a time when all games kicked off on a Saturday at 3pm. There was no Super Sunday or Monday Night Football.

Fixtures were not moved for TV audiences and increased viewing figures.

Teams didn’t have short weeks because some bigwig at Sky wants to have Newcastle v Manchester United on a Tuesday night, just days after United played in the 5.30pm game on a Saturday night.

The reason? Everyone supposedly wants to watch United on TV.

I wasn’t around for the old First Division. All I know is that the Premier League is the be-all and end-all for the modern club.

The race for the top four is more important than winning the FA Cup.

On average, cup competitions add an extra two games for most of the teams in the Premier League.

That means 40 games. Teams in the league below have 46 league games.

That is fixture congestion.