It feels a little bit like a broken record, but the John Terry saga rolls on, with his finger-to-lips "shhh" salute to fans at the KC Stadium last night providing fuel for plenty of journalists in Wedensday's papers. Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti has said he can have some time off if he needs it, while the continuing murmurings of discontent seem to be heading to crescendo, with pressure from all angles on JT to be stripped of the England captaincy.

Martin Samuel in the Mail, looks at Fabio Capello's salary and decides that the Italian is worth the money that the FA fork out for his salary in comparison to politicians such as sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe spoke out against Terry, causing a media storm last week - while Capello has remained both calm and quiet in order to properly assess what is a delicate situation.

"So now you know why he gets the money. It is not for working out that Wayne Rooney is a better option than Michael Owen. It is not for finding a way of playing Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in the same team, or mining the gold in Theo Walcott. It is because the manager of the England football team is under scrutiny like no man in Britain, not even the Prime Minister, and even when recovering from surgery.

Don’t believe me? Well, on Friday, January 29, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, appeared before an inquiry investigating the reasoning and legality of a war he declared, against the will and counsel of a great many, that may yet pan out as the worst foreign-policy decision since Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler.

On the same day it was revealed the captain of the England football team was having it off with the ex-girlfriend of the reserve left back. No guesses for which story received the greater coverage; no guesses for which story continues to dominate the news agenda five days later.
Fabio Capello

A government minister was driven to make a statement at the weekend. Not on Blair, on John Terry. Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister, said Terry’s conduct, if substantiated, called into question his role as England captain and he would be speaking to the Football Association to establish their views.

Meanwhile, Fabio Capello, the England manager, is recuperating after a knee operation at his home in Lugano. He says almost nothing. That is why we pay him £6million a year: to not be an opportunist berk like Sutcliffe and make a bad situation worse."

Elsewhere, Matthew Syed at the Times is the latest writer to lend his opinion to the Terry debate, looking at the wider picture of disloyalty in football and society. Heavy stuff on a Wednesday morning in Betrayal: The cardinal sin of captaincy.

"I suspect all would be OK with John Terry’s captaincy of the England team had his latest affair been of the swinging variety. You know, had Wayne Bridge been in on it and, as they say, high on it. But, to judge from the anguished noises emanating from the Bridge camp, that was far from the case. The Manchester City defender was not merely unaware of Terry’s alleged shenanigans, but mortified by them. This, then, is a scandal not about sex, but about betrayal.

We are familiar with footballing types and, indeed, politicians, lawyers, doctors and journalists betraying their wives — and, for that matter, their husbands. Adultery is such a habitual feature of modern society (and, if anthropologists are to be believed, premodern society) that is has become common to regard it as by the by; a matter of personal conscience, to be resolved (or otherwise) with one’s partner if and when it is exposed. But betrayal of a team-mate — well, that seems to be a different thing altogether.

Team sport is a curious thing: the coming together of morally disparate individuals in pursuit of a common purpose. The interaction — as any who have spent more than five minutes playing in a team will tell you — is subtle and takes a fair bit of getting used to: the banter, the practical jokes, the establishment of hierarchy, the nuances of close proximity in the locker room and beyond."