Opta Joe: Wish it could be Christmas every day? Norwich City do

Christmas is coming
The goose is getting fat
In how many PL games
Has Petr Cech worn his hat?

[The answer is 368, or 83 per cent of his appearances, if like King Herod, you play the percentages game]

It’s Christmas. Which means more football, and that’s indisputably a good thing. Here then, is the only guide to football you’ll need to liven up even the most arduous of family gatherings.

No Deal

You’re a Premier League footballer. Oh bad luck, you must have to play football every Boxing Day. Well, yes, but also no. For among us are players who have played more than 100 games in the competition but who have never appeared on Boxing Day. Leading the way is Jack Rodwell with 166, but he is joined by Scott Sinclair, Connor Wickham, Britpop icon Mike Milligan, Andrey Arshavin and Cedric Soares (and Soares has no chance of ending this record in 2018 as Southampton play West Ham on December 27). Suspension, injury, getting stranded in Newport Pagnell. Whatever it takes, these players have it.

Home Alone

Ever wondered why the main protagonists of the Home Alone films are called the McCallisters? It’s a direct tribute to Scottish footballer Gary McAllister (sadly the film’s producers couldn’t spell Macauley Culkin’s character’s name as Kevin McAllister because of potential confusion with the former Chelsea and Hibernian winger). Either way, Gary McAllister embodies festive football more than any other footballer as he remains the only Premier League player to be born on Christmas Day who has also scored on Boxing Day (doing it three times). Each time, after he had rolled the ball into the net, Gary would lean down to the opposing goalkeeper and whisper “You’re what the French call les incompetents.”

End Times

Your out-of-office email is on and the year is done, finished, complete. For English football, though, the end of the year is frustratingly about halfway through the season, but what if we just decided to end the season on Christmas Eve at 11pm, and told the players to report back for pre-season after the spring like some sort of NFL outfit? Well, there’d be some refreshing variation in league champions is what would happen. Liverpool would have won the Premier League three times, once more than Arsenal. Newcastle, Aston Villa and Leeds would have celebrated Premier League titles, while Norwich would have been champions of England twice in the space of five years between 1988 and 1992. Norfolk has never seen anything like it. Literally.

Turkey

The faux-traditional festive meat product of choice will be prepared up and down the country on Christmas Day but while you’re waiting, try this one for size: who are the only two footballers whose names contain all the letters in TURKEY to have scored goals (presumably by carving the opposition’s defence open) in the Premier League? If you hadn’t already worked it out, the answer is: Laurent Koscielny and Andranik Teymourian with 19 and two goals respectively. Merry Christmas.

The OptaJoe column is written by Duncan Alexander