Everton FC

Well, this is it. The big one. Well the first of the big two, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. This month could really be make or break for our season with the fixture list throwing up Liverpool away twice, Arsenal at home, and United at Old Trafford, a run of games which is not the best when you're missing literally all your strikers (all the ones worth mentioning anyway). First up though, the derby at Anfield where we haven't won in just under 10 years, which is a frigging long time in football.

I've been wondering out loud with a few of my red-shite supporting friends, whether I would prefer to see us beat Liverpool in the cup, or whether it would be all the sweeter to beat them tonight and see them lose the Premier League by a point or two. While I'm not entirely confident of us grabbing a win in either game, I do reckon this is perhaps the best time to be playing Liverpool at the moment, with us winning five of our last six games and not conceding a goal since that dramatic and heartbreaking late winner Ashley Young scored against us in early December. Add to this Liverpool's pretty abysmal performance against Stoke, Rafa's weird rant, and his ongoing contract negotiations and you could have a recipe for disaster.

Having said that, the Merseyside Derby is one of the few games of the season when the formbook can be hurled dramatically out the window, so who knows?

Anyway, while I would love to see us thrash the gobshites tonight and next Sunday, it would be nice if we could have a nice (relatively) civil derby atmosphere for once. Over the past few years, its become increasingly disharmonious and downright nasty with chants like the one about Gerrard's kid, and P Nev's handicapped daughter. It's just not in the spirit of things. In order to foster a spirit of mutual camaraderie and man's love for his fellow man here is some footage from the first ever filmed Derby at Goodison in 1902-03. You wouldn't get a two-footed thigh-high lunge in a game like this, and if you did you would get a red card for it! Sorry but that Kuyt tackle still pisses me off...

Could be an interesting one this. On the one hand, in the games we've played so far this season we've looked lacklustre at the back, and that's putting it kindly. Tim Howard seems to be having a crisis of confidence which causes him to flail wildly at any cross or shot like a visually impared jack-rabbit, and Joleon Lescott has taken to absent mindedly wandering up and down the left flank, seemingly only vaguely aware that a football match is happening, much less that he is participating in it.

With Arsenal at home you would be forgiven for expecting a resounding thrashing, but I just have a funny feeling about this game. They are missing the wacky William Gallas and oddly-haired man mountain Bacary Sagna, and if there's one area where Arsenal lacks strength in depth it's at the back. If we play a 4-4-2, as I suspect we will with Cahill suspended, then it would give us a chance at giving Vaughny or Saha a run-out with the Yak to really have a go at them, like Hull managed so successfully in their win at the Emirates a couple of weeks ago. Having said that, we're nursing a few injuries ourselves with Castillo, Neville, Osman and possibly Yobo and Jags missing, but then again Moyes finally signed on the dotted line this week which could give the boys a timely boost of confidence.

Yes I'm sitting on the fence, and no I don't care. Oh, go on then... 2-1 to the toffees, with Arteta and James Vaughan the goalscorers. We have to remain optimistic don't we?