Palios to miss meeting with England players Soccer News

Daniel Taylor

Mark Palios, the English Football Association's chief executive, will not attend today's clear-the-air meeting with senior England players aimed at improving relations between the ruling body and Sven-Goran Eriksson's team in the wake of the Rio Ferdinand and Alan Smith affairs.

Instead Palios will leave the process to two of the FA's newest employees: Trevor Brooking, the director of football development, and Brendon Batson, who is overseeing the review of disciplinary procedures.

They will report to Palios the recommendations from the England camp. David Beckham will be missing because of his commitments in Spain, but Gary Neville, David James and possibly others will be there to represent the players. They will make clear their unhappiness with the FA's handling of the recent high-profile cases.

The England coach, like Palios, will send his apologies.

The most pressing item will be to consider modifying the FA's regulations so that, if there is another case of an England player being in trouble with the police or the authorities, there will be guidelines in place for the FA to act upon, so avoiding the spur-of-the-moment decisions that were evident in the cases of Ferdinand and Smith.

England's players were so infuriated that the FA banned Ferdinand from England duty before the hearing into his missed drugs test they threatened to go on strike before the Euro 2004 qualifying tie in Turkey.

The relationship between the players and the FA deteriorated again in November when Smith was arrested over the now-infamous bottle-throwing incident and Palios ordered him to be sent home within hours of arriving at the team hotel for the friendly against Denmark.

There was controversy when the FA moved last night to clarify Brooking's reported assertion that Ferdinand should not have been banned from England duty while being able to play for Manchester United.

Rather than attacking the FA's stance on the issue, head of media Adrian Bevington claimed that Brooking was only highlighting the kind of procedural problems he had been brought in to sort out.

"Trevor Brooking has never said it was wrong to leave Rio Ferdinand out of the England team to play Turkey in October as has been suggested," said Bevington.