Fernando Torres has scored 19 goals for his club this season.

That is three more than Wayne Rooney, who has admittedly featured in fewer matches than the Spaniard, but it is also only four less than Robin van Persie.

Van Persie’s goalscoring exploits at the start of the season have effectively won Manchester United the Premier League title ahead of schedule, but his worrying loss of form – he has only scored once in the last 12 matches – has coincided with exits from both the Champions League and the FA Cup.

At Chelsea, Torres has impressed in fits and starts this campaign and – while he has

There are two lines of questioning that are rolled out before Jose Mourinho at every press conference and interview: which club will you be managing next season, and what game are you playing with Iker Casillas?

The Portuguese's answers to the former are ever more cryptic; his responses to the latter are ever more juvenile.

Last evening, Mourinho decided to respond to both questions at the same time, in one rambling answer that resembled a stream of consciousness.

"I want to come back to Inter, but I will not coach them next year. They won’t be my team next year," he told Sky Italia.

After over 24 hours of tedious political agendas infecting our beautiful game in response to one managerial appointment, it was with a massive sigh of relief that ED sat down in a comfortable chair for a mouthwatering double bill of high-end Champions League action.

Though both games delivered - especially PSG-Barcelona - there was nonetheless a touch of the 'Di Canios' about the Parc des Princes contest, or more specifically how it was generally portrayed.

The minute whispers escaped the stadium that a certain 38-year-old marketing powerhouse had been given the nod by Carlo Ancelotti to

Davodreza Abasbahi-Gotti is not about to become Paolo Di Canio's first signing at Sunderland. He is not a footballer. But like Di Canio in his peak years as a player, Abasbahi-Gotti – no relation to John - is apparently quite difficult to pin down.

Abasbahi-Gotti came to the UK from Iran in 2002. He does not seem to have spent the time wisely serving three jail sentences in 11 years. Since washing up in the London area, he has notched up 18 convictions and 40 offences that include assaulting a police officer, theft and driving while disqualified. Several times.

Why he is still in the UK is

Out goes the storied martinet, in comes the fascinating fascist. If ever there was a reason why Paolo Di Canio, proud football explorer and even prouder admirer of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, has been installed as Sunderland manager to succeed the sacked Martin O’Neill, it can be discovered in the dispiriting performances of men like the ghostly Adam Johnson. Di Canio's anointing suggests one right winger has benefited from another's failure.

Johnson is an example of why players get managers sacked, a microcosm of a wider apathy at the Stadium of dimming Light. His was a listless,

For some years now the FA and England have been able to adopt a position of superiority over many European nations regarding racist behaviour from the terraces.

English football and society have progressed at a faster rate than much of the continent, goes the oft-repeated mantra. This is thanks to sterling work by the game’s authorities, partly due to the need to eradicate a hooligan problem associated with the far right and punished heavily by UEFA in the past.

The relative ease with which English football managed to reduce racism from fans has also partly been facilitated by a wider

Sunderland will probably go down.

Previously hushed tones in Newcastle and the more optimistic parts of Birmingham have been espousing the theory that their main rivals – for different reasons – could well fall into the Championship.

Those tones extended to a wider discussion, comparing Sunderland’s incredibly tricky run over the coming weeks, placing them at the foot of the line of bigger clubs threatened by the drop.

But that was all hypothetical until arguably their two most effective players were ruled out for the rest of the season. Even David Miliband is abandoning ship now.

Steven

What is there to say about last night's Montenegro-England game, really?

England? Good first half, atrocious second half.

Montenegro? The reverse.

Stand-out performers? Only one.

Yes, it's the man who inspired Montenegro's comeback. Not half-time sub and goalscorer Dejan Damjanovic, or captain Mirko Vucinic.

No, it was the gravelly-voiced stadium announcer who presumably defied any number of FIFA directives to bellow encouragement to the home team throughout the second half.

Among his chants were the delightful 'Kill these English' and 'F*** you England', but we can't hold that against him.