Hands up if you love christmas!

English football and Christmas. They are like two old friends living on opposite sides of the world. Spend some time apart and it’s easy to forget how well they complement each other, but when it’s time to meet up again it doesn’t take long before the old spark is reignited.

For all the good a winter break would do players I’d hate to lose the packed festive fixture schedule. All year most supporters have to wait a week between games, but come Christmas we can all enjoy the hectic high’s and low’s from playing every three days.

For Everton it’s the start of a particularly important period for our season. We play Birmingham, West Ham and Stoke between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. If we are to start making our way up the table we really need to be picking up 7 points out of the possible 9. We will also find out whether Moyes has figured out an effective way to beat teams that adopt a cautious approach against us. To follow it up we have tough games against Spurs and Liverpool with the FA cup third round sandwiched between.

January 1^st also see’s the opening of the transfer window. It is notoriously difficult to do business in this window but this year Everton really must do some. We cannot complete the season with a strike force this blunt and the news that Landon Donovan will not be coming in on loan means we also need to address the right-side of midfield.

With Steven Pienaar out of contract in the summer, rumours are circulating that he will also be sold, possibly to spurs with Nico Kranjcar coming in the opposite direction. As brilliant as the South African is, this has to be good business as we just cannot afford to let our players see out their contracts and leave for free.

As far as the right-side is concerned I think the key thing is to get someone who can carry the ball at pace and who is a ‘specialist’ in that position. We have to save money for strikers so I’m thinking someone at the Routledge, Eagles level rather than some blockbuster talent.

God knows what we’ll do about a striker, but I doubt we’ll get much of an improvement for spending less than £10-15million. We might just have to make do with a loan until the summer, unless we are able to get really good money for fringe players or choose to sell a big player.