Football clubs up and down the country are becoming more and more scientific in the way they treat injured players and Manchester City are no different.

Whereas in the past, teams might have relied solely on a physiotherapist, many now employ specialist dieticians, fitness coaches and so forth to make sure their players are available for selection whenever possible.

To that end, City have been enlisting the services of a podiatrist, a specialist in feet who is able to find links between a player's injuries and the way his feet are formed or the way he walks.

He has been treating me for a while now after I had an operation on the knee I injured last season.

After I had recovered from the surgery and began to play again I began to feel some discomfort in the same area and the podiatrist, Steve Lyons, who incidentally is also employed by Manchester United, put it down to my feet.

He feels a lot of injuries come from the way your weight is distributed or even from one leg being slightly longer than the other.

He explained to me how this can affect your back, your hip and your knees and how it can bring on injuries.

In an effort to identify the problem he made a plastercast of my feet and from there made some special custom insoles.

I have to wear them in my regular day shoes as well as my boots and they are basically helping me to change the way I have been walking for the past 31 years.

In my every day shoes I have a hard pair which I am supposed to wear for two hours and in my boots there is a softer pair that I wear for the game.

I have to believe that Steve knows what he's doing. After all if he's working on the feet of the likes of David Beckham and Juan Sebastian Veron as well as mine he must be doing something right!

You might have read a lot about the dispute that the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) and the Premier and Football Leagues were having over the distribution of money gained from TV coverage of matches.

The PFA, for whom I am the representative at City, had called a strike for next week because they were not happy at the amount of money that they were due to receive following a new deal struck by the leagues and the TV companies.

Thankfully, since calling the strike the sides have come to a compromise which will see the PFA get more money for its members over a longer period of time.

As a player you build an understanding with not only your manager, but your chairman and one or two members of the board of directors and with all the talk of a strike you wonder if they are starting to look at you in a different way because you are the PFA delegate.

So I am glad it has been resolved, not only from a personal point of view, but from a footballing point of view and from a fan's point of view.