What a lovely lad John Terry is. And the newspapers are continuing to discuss his future as England captain and whether he should wear the armband at the World Cup finals.

As you would expect, most are finding it hard to muster any sympathy and are ready to put the boot in.

In The Times, Patrick Barclay pulls no punches, as you would expect, and is quick to slam the play-away defender after his sordid affair with Wayne Bridge's other half.

If Fabio Capello and the FA are still thinking about what to do with John Terry, someone else should be doing the thinking.

Capello simply has to make the easiest and most popular decision of his career by taking the armband from Terry and giving it to Wayne Rooney, who can lead out England with his head held high on March 3, when they play Egypt in a friendly match, and on to the World Cup in South Africa.

Whether Terry should be one of the ten players following Rooney on to the Wembley turf is another, more complex (if less important) matter. But what a lift it would give the footballing nation if the England captaincy reverted to being an honour rather than a public-relations hand grenade.

Terry, for all his qualities as a leader and a footballing central defender — his hard-man image belies the Chelsea captain’s excellence as a distributor of the ball from the back — has been a near-disaster in the job, a recurrent source of embarrassment.

Enough is enough, and this is now too much. England cannot be led out again by someone who comes with more baggage than Louis Vuitton.

But, after scouring the papers, we have managed to find someone who thinks John Terry should lead England, and that is Oliver Holt in the Daily Mirror.

Question his behaviour off the pitch all you want but the critical issue remains his ability to keep playing as one of the best centre-halves in the world.

If he had buckled under the pressure of the furore surrounding his private life on Saturday, then maybe the questions about whether he can keep his job as England captain might have had some legitimacy.

But Terry didn't buckle. He didn't even look like buckling. Typically, in fact, he reacted by scoring a superb late winner that kept his team at the top of the Premier League.

He did not celebrate wildly. He did not perform cart-wheels. He turned and ran back to his own half, brushing off the congratulations of his team-mates.

If we are looking for an England squad of blameless innocents, we will have to search for a long, long time and settle on a squad of 23 six-year-olds.

If, however, it's footballers strong enough to stand up in adversity that we're looking for, then Terry will be leading his country out for the first match against the USA in June.