When the football starts in August and is quickly interrupted by international windows in September and October it's pretty annoying but November's friendly matches are even worse, now those will be a thing of the past because of the UEFA Nations League.
In the first three months of the season we always get England playing in rubbish qualification matches against teams they can't lose to but will struggle to beat before November's brave and honour filled draw or loss to one of Europe's best sides.
Now we'll at least be replacing those matches with a series of fixtures that get the juices flowing and if England don't win then they can get relegated, maybe Big Sam got out of the international management game at the right time.
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England's draw with Spain and Croatia puts them in genuine danger of relegation.
There's four divisions made up of four groups each. England are in the top division where they'll be groups of three with the top side in each group going into semi finals and the bottom placed sides getting relegated.
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In the second division the top sides will get promoted and the bottom sides relegated, in division three and four there's groups of four instead of three. It's all based on UEFA's national coefficient rankings as of October 2017.
But the competition doesn't just act as a way to replace friendlies it will also determine the pots for qualification to the 2020 Euros, with the qualifiers taking place in a shorter time period because of the Nations League, and there's even places up for grabs for automatic qualification to the Euros.
Four places will be left open from qualifying with the top team in each group going into play-offs, should that include a team that's already qualified then the place will go to the next highest ranking team, not next team in their group.
Confusing malarkey I think you'll agree.
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That will mean a play-off coming from each division and the winner of each play-off qualifying for Euro 2020 and thus one of Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Liechtenstein, Malta, Andorra, Kosovo, San Marino or Gibraltar qualifying.
So some teams could decide that finishing top of their group in the Nations League is more important than Euro 2020 qualifiers, and an easier route and...that means SCOTLAND HAS A CHANCE TO QUALIFY FOR A MAJOR TOURNAMENT!!!!!
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