The month of January is flying by, and so too are the number of days before the end of EPL Talk’s first book club discussion. This month’s book is Soccernomics 2.0, the brilliant book by authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski.

If you’re participating in the book discussion, here are three things you need to do:

1) Finish reading the book by the end of this month,

2) Join in the book discussion in the comments section of this article; You can do this at any time between now and the end of month if there’s a particular chapter you want to discuss.

3) Start thinking about questions you’d like to ask the author. If you want to post your questions in the thread now, go ahead and add a comment here.

The exciting news is that we’re planning on hosting a live Q&A with co-author Stefan Szymanski at the end of this month’s book discussion. Start thinking about questions you’d like to ask. Or, again, post them in the thread now in case you forget them or if you may not be able to participate in the live chat.

Two new developments that you may find interesting in regards to the topics discussed in  the Soccernomics 2.0 book are:

1) Simon Kuper’s excellent article published yesterday in The Financial Times, which discusses whether Arsene Wenger has gotten it wrong when it comes to the game’s finances. Whether you’re an Arsenal fan or not, it’s a must-read.

2) One of the stories of the season has been Bradford City’s incredible run in the League Cup. While reading Soccernomics 2.0, a section jumped out at me where it discusses managers who have continually been some of the best in the past 37 years based on their win percentage. One of the men mentioned in the section is Steve Parkin, who is the assistant manager at Bradford. The book discusses how very few people pay attention to managers (and assistant managers) like Steve Parkin, Ronnie Moore, Paul Sturrock and others because so much attention these days – by the media and fans — is focused on how the manager looks and whether they have charisma, rather than looking at the raw statistics of their track record. Too often, if they don’t look the part, they’re rejected by the top flight clubs.

Discuss these and more topics from Soccernomics 2.0 in this month’s book discussion thread.