New Torres scare
Hit by injuries to 10 first-team players, and already fielding the Premier League's cheapest defence, Liverpool's squad looks threadbare. There is surely no greater indictment on the sorry state of Liverpool's squad than the prospect of Rafael Benitez regretting excluding Philipp Degen from his Champions league list. There is also no weakness more glaring in Liverpool's transfer strategy than the defence that Benítez fielded at Fulham, the cheapest to appear in the Premier League this weekend with the exception of a club that spent the previous 33 years in the lower leagues, Burnley. No squad in the country is immune to 10 absent players plus the finest talent available hobbling with injury, as is currently the case with Torres. Although, and this is the failure costing Benítez most of all, it is doubtful any club with consistent Champions League income and designs on the title would enter a season with such woeful cover for their one world-class, and injury-plagued, striker.
guardian.co.uk
Can Trott be English?
Jonathan Trott has an English father and British passport. He lives in England with his English wife and says he is 100 per cent committed to playing cricket for England, which, judging by first impressions, he's very good at. One thing nags at me though. Does Trott 'get' Graeme Swann? Swann, the England spinner who'd happily swap his cricket career for a gig on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, joked this week that he'd rather read Viz than analyse videos of the opposition. Typical Swann, we giggled. But the gag raised a serious question: does Trott, his England team-mate, know what Viz is? Trott says he feels English, but like Kevin Pietersen, he only moved to England as a professional in his early twenties. Clearly, he is English enough to play for England. But culturally, he'll always be South African. Because you can change your national allegiances, and even change your accent (though Trott hasn't). But you can't change your upbringing.
telegraph.co.uk



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