Can we just scrap the pointless winter break?
Due to a mixture of the break and our early FA Cup exit, tonight will be just our 3rd game in January.
These are the toughest, coldest, darkest days of the year. The ones that you need something like football to look forward to, to drag you through the week. Instead most have us have spent the last 3 weeks with very little to do except for the Crystal Palace win (and some cricket!).
We finally get back into the season tonight with a trip to the City Ground – a place that we have not won at since 2016.
Now before you say “that’s because Nottingham Forest are only just back in the Premier League”, we have actually played them 3 times in the last 6 seasons.
The first of which was that defeat in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. Probably the last day of Arsene Wenger’s reign. That was followed 4 years later by another defeat at the same stage of the competition. And then last year the City Ground was where our Premier League hopes finally died.
Hooters aside, the City Ground has not been a happy hunting ground for us, a fact which must change tonight.
The naysayers have written us out of the title race, but we sit just 5 points behind Liverpool and level with Manchester City. The dream is not yet dead.
With less than 2-days left in the January transfer window, I expect us to make as many signings as Spurs have won trophies in the last 15 years.
It has been a strange old window with not top club yet to make any big signings.
Social media is awash with fans of Everton, Aston Villa, West Ham and Newcastle blaming PSR (formally FFP) for their sides lack of spending. The truth is all of these clubs have spent A LOT over the last 3 or 4 years and do not have any money left.
Their fans forget that transfer fees are not the only aspect of expenditure, so the “net spend” infographics they produce are meaningless. Expenditure also includes salaries and general running costs.
Take Aston Villa. Their fans are moaning that they are very close to infringing PSR despite having sold Jack Grealish for around £100m.
Yes, they sold Grealish for a huge sum, but in the last 3 years they have still lost £306.6m.
The summer they sold Grealish, they signed Emiliano Buendia, Leon Bailey, Danny Ings and Lucas Digne. They also signed Calum Chambers for nothing and bought in Philippe Coutinho on loan.
Whilst their “net spend” might have zero for the period, the wage difference of 6 new players against one departing would have been huge. You lose a single player on (say) £80k a week, and replace him with 6 costing £80k a week, that is an increase in expenditure of around £20m a year.
Since 2019, Everton have made a £417.3m loss. But yet, PSR is the problem….
I expect very little transfer business to be done over the next few days, which I am sure will throw Sky’s plans into chaos. But at least we have real football to watch rather than two weird men pretending to get text’s live on air, when their source is actually just Twitter.
Enjoy the game tonight!
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
Just as the Woolwich wanderers are when they hit their normal ‘st arsegoes day’!
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Keenos, many congratulations on topping 470 consecutive daily podcasts. That’s a remarkable achievement and you should be proud of both your output and your consistent high standard of blog. You are up there with Arseblog for both quality content and daily posting. Well done,sir.
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Blog posts not podcasts! DoH!
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