IN George Orwell’s 1984 he talks about war without end. If he had been as clever or as prescient as he thought he was, he might have foreseen ‘football without end instead’. Which admittedly is a lesser of the two evils but still, when is it going to stop?

People are only just scraping the Blu-Tac off their windows after removing their ‘Road To Wembley’ posters, and already the fixtures are out for next season.

Everton are hosting Arsenal on the opening day, which rekindles memories of 2004 when they came and battered us 4-1 and everyone feared for our Premier League survival, so we perhaps shouldn’t be too downhearted if we lose the opener this time.

A quick scan of the schedule reveals a rather stern February, with back-to-back games against Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham, but then that’s evened out somewhat by a run of matches in March against Hull, Birmingham, Bolton and Wolves.

While the announcement of next season’s games provides a degree of excitement for supporters, spare a thought for three senior squad members who have been released, Nuno Valente, Segundo Castillo and Andy van der Meyde.

Van der Meyde attained a certain cult status, and while his misdemeanours are well catalogued it would be nice if he was ultimately remembered for the cross that set up Dan Gosling’s winner in the derby.

He won’t though, let’s be honest – it will be for the drink spiking nonsense and having his dog kidnapped.

Click here to see the full list of Everton FC fixtures