West Ham manager Sam Allardyce has again called for a winter break after Diafra Sakho and Stewart Downing both returned from international duty with injuries.
The form of Sakho and Downing has been a key part in the Irons' positive start to the Premier League campaign, climbing up to fourth place.
However, both Downing, who came off at half-time of England's friendly against Scotland because of a knee injury, and Sakho -- unable to take part in Senegal's African Nations Cup qualifier against Botswana because of a back injury -- are major doubts for Saturday's trip to Everton.
Allardyce has long been a fan of recharging everyone's batteries -- and sees no reason why a short break after the hectic Christmas schedule cannot be worked into the domestic schedule.
"The demand on the players in the Premier League is so great for so long and so often that eventually they are going to break down at some stage," he said.
"If you look at the load this year on players, it gets greater than ever before. Not only do they travel at international level across the world, but the constant pressure of the Premier League is getting faster and more demanding, both physically and mentally.
"The time they have to rest is fewer and further between and that ultimately ends up with players never really recovering fully enough to go into the next game, hence they go into a game with a knock or a bruise and it ends up resulting in an injury."
Allardyce added: "We still don't look after our players as well as other countries because we don't put a couple of weeks in January to re-charge the batteries for everybody and let them go again.
"It would give the players a better finish to the season, our team always increases its level of performance physically when we come back from having a sunshine break for five or six days, I make sure we get one somewhere along the line.
"The proof of that is our physical stats increase from there until the end of the season, which gives us a platform to get better results when everyone else might be tired.
"Our Christmas period is traditionally something we always have to keep, but the players don't half get some stick when they have played their fourth game in eight days with people saying 'They don't look sharp, they don't like they are trying,' when they have just gone through that period of time when everyone else is getting 'popped up' and enjoying themselves and having their presents -- these lads are having to go and perform for four games in eight days and they wonder why they are tired at the end of it?
"If you can't get a rest then, that is going to promote even more injuries.
"The injury list for most clubs in and around December and January was horrific for a lot of teams across the entire football league."
Allardyce believes despite an already packed fixture list, the effort should be made to find some mid-season downtime.
He added: "We would not be disturbing those [traditional Christmas fixtures] and then there is the third round of the FA Cup. Should we not extend the season a little longer at the back end and cope with it that way?
"The fans buy into international breaks no problem. It is a fact of life.
"Remember, they didn't buy into us kicking off on a Monday night or at 12:30 on a Saturday or Sunday lunchtime when Sky came in, but they are happy with it now."
