Jens Lekman's Farewell Song

The paper round up has a bit of a feel of pointlessness now - there's only one story in town... but let's still keep up with everything else.
Wayne Rooney scored a couple for England last night:

His brace made him the first since Tommy Taylor in 1958 to score eight goals in a World Cup qualifying campaign.

But not only that, he became the first player since Gary Lineker in 1991 to score 10 England goals in a season.

He has simply been prolific this year, and has gone fourth in the chart of leading goalscorers in competitive games above Bryan Robson. At one time everybody expected Michael Owen to set new benchmarks for England.

But at this rate Rooney, who is still incredibly only 23, is going to be the man who goes down in history.

He is the player that Capello originally identified as making the difference for an under-performing England side.

It is almost unbelievable to think that after his breakthrough in 2003, when at the time he was the youngest player to pull on an England shirt, he then went three years without a competitive goal.

Nani may be on his way out as well:

Sporting Lisbon have initiated talks with Manchester United about re-signing Nani on an extended loan spell or arranging a player-plus-cash exchange involving their captain, the attacking midfielder Joao Moutinho.

A delegation led by the Sporting vice-president, Ribeiro Teles, is understood to have visited Manchester on Tuesday, hoping to capitalise on a disappointing season for Nani in which he started only seven Premier League games.

However, the 22-year-old favours a move to Italy and has expressed misgivings about returning to the club that sold him for around £16m two years ago.

A straight cash deal has been ruled out because of Sporting's financial restraints.

Sir Alex has apparently failed to convince Tevez to stay:

Sir Alex Ferguson appears to have failed in a personal attempt to persuade ­Carlos Tevez that his future remains at ­Manchester United after he telephoned the 25-year‑old striker to speak to him directly.

The Argentinian, who has become ­disillusioned at Old Trafford, is ­considering his options, including a potential move across the city to Manchester City, although that is said to be "only one of a few options" he is ­weighing up. He is also said to have been nonplussed by ­Ferguson's intervention after a source close to him said: "You treat someone badly for a whole year, you don't make it up with a telephone call, right?"

"Treat someone badly?" If anyone deserves flak for his attitude towards us it's Tevez, not Ronaldo.
The Independent has some quotes from Berbatov, this one's pretty good:

"I want people to remember me as a very good and skilful player. I don't want to be remembered as a top scorer," Berbatov said yesterday. "I've played with strikers with 100 goals, who can't control the ball," he said. "It seems like a three-metre pass when they're trying to control the ball with their feet."