Which route to take through the John Terry moral maze? Unless you have an admiration for highly-paid supposed role models behaving with the same devil-may-care attitude to monogamy as the courtiers of Caligula, it's fair to say he's been a very silly boy. Not least for getting caught.

Perhaps most damaging to Terry and by his extension his fellow members of the football millionaires' club is that no-one seems particularly surprised that the self-styled strong man of the King's Road is a love rat. Indeed, the sense of moralising towards such people would seem to have long since passed. It's been obvious for years that footballers live by their own rules and indulge in practices, sexual and otherwise, that are not considered normal by or accessible to the man in the street. The money and privilege now afforded to footballers would seem to offer access to a lifestyle and opportunity akin to that of the classic rock ‘n' rollers of days gone by. Without the drugs, of course.

The late Sid Vicious was once asked about the public's response to the Sex Pistols. "I've met the man in the street and he is a c***," came the response. Similarly, when Oasis singer Liam Gallagher was asked at the height of his fame whether his lifestyle of heavy refuelling and acquiring ladies was anything to be ashamed of, his response was this: "You'd 'ave it, wouldn't you." Keith Richards famously told a court that "we are not old men and we are not governed by petty morals". Some of the recent pratfalls of a group of young men whose brains are obviously restricted to below the waist would suggest a prevalence of similar attitudes, though perhaps without the style or articulacy.

English football's unwanted American families again dominate our headlines and it is a delicious irony that the country's greatest footballing rivals share such similar problems.

Around the time Tom Hicks Junior's email abuse of a member of a fans activists group forced him to resign from the board of Liverpool FC came news of the Glazers' latest financial plan for Manchester United, a £500 million corporate bond that, in the 24 hours following its release, has come under severe scrutiny.

Neither story should provide much comfort for followers of either club. Hicks stepped aside but his father remains in co-control with George Gillett. The source of the ire that caused the younger Hicks to pen the fateful words of "blow me f**kface" is believed to be the sending of an article about Rafael Benitez's transfer policy being forced to service the club's debts. Andriy Voronin and Andrea Dossena may be gone for a combined £6.5 million but a paltry £1.5 million is all the Spaniard has been granted to spend.

There are many dissenters of the transfer window system. Not least those of us who are in the business of generating football news stories. The intrigue surrounding the type of megadeals that used to happen mid-season was always a reliable way of filling column inches.

Andy Cole's move from Newcastle United to Manchester United in January 1995 had me and my university chums crowded rounded the only telly we knew with teletext while a year later my Toon-supporting pals were celebrating the arrival of Faustino Asprilla as the final piece in the jigsaw.

No such fun these days.The phrase "cutting your cloth accordingly" is one overused in football parlance but it's what clubs have to do. And the same goes for us in the reporting trade.

It has been a week for the veneration of legends. Ryan Giggs was honoured on Sunday as BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2009, voted for by the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An additional reward was his being scoffed at by many a critic. Giggs' winning of PFA Footballer of the Year in May for season 2008-9 also happened to much consternation.

Sentiment clearly played a part in the delivery of both gongs to Giggs' Worsley mansion and it is that emotion that it is in overflowing supply over on Merseyside where Liverpool FC are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Bill Shankly at Anfield. The Scot, hewn from the type of industrial working-class background that has yielded British football its greatest leaders, casts a shadow over the club he took from the obscurity of the Second Division to the precipice of their unprecedented glory of the late 70s and early 80s.

Sunday was a day to relive all our yesterdays, as Ian St. John, Liverpool forward of the 60s, was called into the Sky studio to reminisce about the Shankly era ahead of his still-beloved team's clash with Arsenal. "Saint", previously full of anecdotes and those vocal impressions of the great man all his former charges seem to do (the word "son" gets plenty of airing amid a guttural Scots burr), ended the match looking as disconsolate as he probably did when his legendary ITV show "Saint and Greavsie" got axed in 1992. As tears welled in his eyes at Liverpool's current plight, he desperately needed Jimmy Greaves to steal in with a gag about Scottish goalkeepers to cheer him up.

One win in nine matches tells a story. And it should be a horror story as far as Liverpool supporters are concerned. Yet their faith in their manager remains strong. Monday night's 2-2 draw with Birmingham will be chiefly remembered for David Ngog's winning of a dubious penalty yet there were far stronger undercurrents at play.

ESPN pundits Kevin Keegan and Danny Murphy made great pains to remind the watching audience of Liverpool fans' propensity to never boo a manager and also the tradition the club has of never sacking managers. It is often said that Don Welsh, back in 1956, is the only Reds boss to have been fired by the club. That however, does not take into account the enforced departures of Graeme Souness, Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier.

Souness was roundly booed and perhaps rightly so. He eventually walked after making the grave mistake of selling the story of a heart-bypass operation to The Sun newspaper, the publication that infamously sullied those who were killed and injured at Hillsborough. Performances on the pitch hardly helped his cause and he was replaced by Evans, the final graduate of Bill Shankly's "Boot Room". Evans' team played a brand of entertaining football the club have rarely been associated with since yet failed to deliver anything but a League Cup.