Oops, he's gone and done it again. Andrew Flintoff is back and the talk, once again, is not of cricket but of discipline, timekeeping and alcohol. A trip to Flanders designed, presumably, to broaden players' minds and get a bit of good PR has blown up in England's face with the news that Flintoff has been disciplined for missing the team bus. It is a distraction that nobody needs right now, in the week before the Ashes.

Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, certainly didn't need it. After a fraught winter, he has been enjoying a stint out of the limelight as good results and a lack of off-field crises have enabled him to go to ground. He was making a rare appearance at Edgbaston yesterday, ostensibly to shower praise on Michael Vaughan, but spent much of his time fudging the question as to whether Flintoff had been drinking heavily the night before missing the bus.

If it does emerge that Flintoff was drinking, Morris will be made to look both foolish and economical with the truth. Thanks, Fred.

Andrew Strauss didn't need it. Attempting to deflect criticism away from his all-rounder, he was forced to concede that what Morris called an “alarm clock issue” is not specific to Flintoff. The team, Strauss said, have a timekeeping issue generally. Ravi Bopara is known to have missed a team meeting this summer, but from what Strauss said yesterday, it is a more widespread challenge for his team to defeat. After that, the Aussies should be a cinch.

If true, there are three problems: it suggests a lack of respect for the leaders of the group, Andy Flower and Strauss himself, and a lack of authority on their part; it suggests a lack of respect within the group generally - is there any worse feeling than being kept waiting because of someone else's rudeness or forgetfulness? - and it makes England sound not like the national team made up of heroes but a team full of adolescents who cannot manage themselves properly.

Flintoff certainly didn't need it because, let's face it, he has plenty of previous in this regard: the “Fredalo” incident at the 2007 World Cup, the drunk in charge of practice in Australia during the 2006-07 tour and questions to be answered on his whereabouts after the team were all out for 51 against West Indies last winter. So Flintoff will spend the next few days under scrutiny, when a pleasant run-out against Warwickshire was the order of the day.

Flower didn't need it. This latest indiscretion will inevitably raise question marks as to how far the Lancastrian is prepared to buy into the team director's regime.

Flower has helped Strauss to repair the damage done by a period during which the previous captain and coach, Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores, were on collision course, and Flintoff has not been involved for much of that time because of injury.

England have been doing very well without him, thank you very much, and it is impossible to ignore the implication behind the comments that the dressing room has been a very contented place.

Flower, too, will be aware that Duncan Fletcher's authority was eroded to damaging effect after his failure to discipline Flintoff during the previous Ashes tour. Flower will not want to make that mistake - and Flintoff should be careful because Flower is no soft touch.

It was, then, the faulty alarm clock that did no one any good. Does it matter at all? That all depends on results.