In a week where Paul Pogba showed himself to be a handy football player, the team are back to the mammoth overspend that is the world of football.

Having taken legal advice from the CIA, we’ll be discussing a few Talking Points from the week in football.

“Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” Sang Bono once, explaining to us the concept of poverty. Well we don’t have Bono but we have the next best thing, Ireland’s version of Bono, Paddy McCloskey. He asks: “Will they finish in fourth place at all?”

The thinking man’s football pundit, with his incredible breadth and scope, wants to take us to the Africa Cup of Nations. He wonders whether the massive discrepancy in quality which is on display there allows us to answer the question whether or not professionalism is having a negative effect on the beautiful game? Are we walking headlong into oblivion?

Will Geeson is back from his Christmas break. When he wasn’t arguing about the third way in the Labour Party, he was sat around in zipless jumpers watching continental football. Sevilla have caught his eye and he wants to know if there is evidence that there is greater equality in European football than there has been for a while.

Ironically, Paddy is Organising Fun this week.

All this and more besides in this week’s episode of a Team of John O’Sheas.