Its a funny ole game, is football.

Jimmy Greaves words, set in stone, the foundation block of the apparently random and capricious nature of football. Any team can beat any team; on the day. Anything can happen. As they often do. Shitty teams beat high flyers, top teams fail to finish things off, last minute, last-gasp equalisers, Barcelona have 98% possession and Celta Vigo, in the 93rd minute, score with their measly 2% and its a draw. Basically; shit happens. And it happens to everybody. That’s why bookies always win. Nothing is ever 100% certain.

Until this week. When we had that rarest of treats; a midweek full fixture list. The Christmas warm-up. And over those 2 evenings and 10 matches, you could have predicted every result with fair confidence and you’d have been right in virtually every one. In fact, every match was won by the team higher in league position. Other than West Ham beating Burnley. The only draw was the 0-0 between Stoke and Southampton, middle table teams separated by just one point.

Ok, there was one notable exception. Everton beat Arsenal. And due to the fact that every other match went according to rankings, according to expectations, I think it fair to deduce that Arsenal’s league position is in fact an aberration. Its wrong. They shouldn’t be there. Thus will now make moves to take up their ‘proper’ league position just under West Brom. This isn’t me; the footballing Gods have spoken and what they’ve said, in their godlike way, is “move out the fuckin’ way, Arsenal!!”

And all this because Spurs won a match. In some style, according to pundits. And we now, apparently, have sights on Ross Barkley, the Everton midfielder. 35 million they want for him. Even though he’s been pretty useless this season and is the latest in a very long line of England superstars seemingly failing to live up to early promise. But maybe, just maybe, he’s not used to his best advantage at Everton, perhaps their style of play stifles his unquestionable talent? Who knows. Does seem odd though that a team collectively just 2 years out of a care home, should sell one of their youngest and best. Though history (very recent history at that) shows that Spurs and ‘record signings’ (which it would be) often don’t work out as well as we hope. Very often.

Happy Thursday; its all to play for.

A xxxx