Your guide to all the hot air and pointless historical facts ahead of Bolton’s trip to Goodison Park

Reasons to be cheerful…

1. Everton played 120 minutes on Wednesday night in the FA Cup against Liverpool, while the Wanderers were sitting at home with their feet up enjoying ITV’s, ahem, excellent coverage of the game.

2. You might not have seen Everton’s winning goal on ITV, but they did manage to show Marouane Fellaini (back) and Steven Pienaar (hamstring) both coming off injured.

3. David Moyes apparently had a training ground bust up with one of his players this week.

Reasons to be fearful…

4. Everton have lost only one of their last 11 games and have won all of their last four home games.

5. Bolton, meanwhile, have won only once in their last 17 north-west derbies and have not won any of their last four away games.

6. As with most other Premier League teams, Gary Megson is mightily impressed by Everton, as are the four pundits at the Mirror, who all think we don’t have a hope. Megson’s opinion on his own team? “Shire horses!”

7. After weeks of playing without a striker, Everton have finally got one available for selection: new signing Jo from Manchester City (of course, you might say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, so this could turn in to a reason to be cheerful, especially judging by Jo’s impact at City).

And the rest…

8. Everton have lost 249 times in the Premier League, so a defeat today would be an unwanted milestone (who the hell works these things out?). If you like this kind of thing click here.

9. More desirable career milestones await Kevin Davies and Matt Taylor should they get on the score sheet today.

10. This website seems to think that Sebastien Puygrenier is a striker and that he’ll replace Ariza Makukula (I’m guessing that this won’t be happening, given that Puygrenier is a centre-half).

11. A more likely scenario may be that Ebi Smolarek gets a chance.

Have your say in the comment box below…

- Bolton’s attitude to cup ties is a disgrace. Roll on January for another humiliation in the FA Cup! Mind you, we get exactly what we deserve, given that only 7,136 fans bothered to turn up to watch.

- Gary Cahill should be fined a fortnight’s wages for getting sent off.

- Our only tactic is hit and hope. Stoke fell for it because their defence is rubbish but few other teams will.

- What happened to us taking the Cups seriously this season, Mr Megson?

- Match updates on the official BWFC website stopped after Northampton went 2-0 up within 28 minutes, which shows what they thought about the result/performance!

- The players are more worried about buying a new 86 inch Plasma telly from the Trafford Centre than wearing the white shirt.

- Danny Shittu looked like the Championship defender he is. In fact, he and Megson were more like Laurel and Hardy. Come back Abdoulaye Meite and Radhi Jaidi all is forgiven!

- The only explanation for Heidar Helguson’s inclusion in the team is that Megson was putting him in the shop window. He and Kevin Davies couldn’t score in a brothel.

- Joey O’Brien and Gavin McCann are Bolton’s version of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, only nowhere near as good.

- Still, at least ITV put us out of our misery by not bothering to show the highlights.

- Special mention to Ding Dong Doo, whose match report summed up the general lack of confidence in Gary Megson, even if he did write it 12 hours before the game finished.

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