The Sunday papers are predictably full of Wayne Rooney analysis, but to be perfectly honest we are sick of that sorry saga.

So it is instead to The Observer and Paul Hayward that we turn, as he waxes lyrical about two British stars making the headlines for their performances on the pitch.

After starring roles in the Champions League this week, Hayward sees a bright future in both Tottenham's Gareth Bale and Arsenal's Jack Wilshere.

“Tottenham's Brazilian goalkeeper thinks Gareth Bale, the team's rising Welsh midfielder, could play for the land of joga bonito, which sits nicely with a thought some of us had at Arsenal on Tuesday night. Jack Wilshere, an 18-year-old Englishman, plays like a 25-year-old Spaniard.

“While the Wayne Rooney show was unfolding along came two bursts of light to show there is a life beyond the Manchester United refusenik's rampant sense of entitlement. British football becomes ever more money-addled. The Liverpool takeover saga morphed effortlessly into the Rooney yarn. On the pitch, though, there were a couple of good reasons to think the British game is still capable of producing high-class footballers and not just dysfunctional celebrities.

“Wilshere, first. Beyond the tender age on his passport, there is no credible reason for Fabio Capello not to start with him when England play France at Wembley next month. The maturity of his performance against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League was such that Gareth Barry, who plays in more or less the same deep midfield position for England, must have turned pale in front of his TV screen.

“The next night Bale, a revelation since converting from left-back to left-midfield, tore through Maicon, the world's most capable right-back, to score a hat-trick against the European champions. A caveat is that Inter were already 4-0 up when Bale launched his one-man counter-surge. Still, San Siro was electrified by Bale's audacity and gift for execution. You could sense every major club in Europe jolting awake and wondering what it might take to extricate him from Spurs.”

Hayward concludes:

“Despite its centrifugal insanity, British football does produce players with skills that are the rule rather than the exception in more sophisticated countries. Northern Ireland yielded Best and Scotland bestowed Kenny Dalglish. Bale and Wilshere, the north London neighbours, are a long way from those heights but they are what football here needs more youngsters to be, which, paradoxically, is un-British. More Brazilian, more Spanish.”