IN years gone by, you could have said that Everton's Easter defeats have left them with nothing to play for.
Just three games to play, with no relegation to worry about and no European football to chase.
But this is modern football and, as a result, David Moyes' side has plenty to play for. Probably a couple of million pounds worth of prizemoney, in fact.
That's the difficult balancing act modern managers have to pull off.
If I was Moyes, I would like nothing better than to have a look at some of my younger players in the three games which remain.
He has two young promising goalkeepers in his squad. He has a young striker called Victor Anichebe. There are players like Andy Van Der Meyde and Matteo Ferrari, who he hasn't seen as much of as he would like.
But all that has to be weighed up against the huge sums of money which are up for grabs between now and the end of the season.
I spoke to Graeme Souness over the weekend and he told me about a campaign recently when he was manager of Blackburn Rovers - and the results on the final weekend of the season were worth more than £2.5m to his club!
That's a colossal sum of cash to most clubs. It could pay a star player's wages for a season, or buy you a new squad player.
And Moyes will be aware of that while he is planning his strategy for the final three games of the season.
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