After yesterday’s Mirror stab at attaching humour to a headline about Shay Given (Unforgiven!) it was almost inevitable that the Sun would respond in kind.

So their story this morning on the City keeper winning his 100^th cap was introduced by the words ‘Shaym he’s not English’...ouch!

However, the sentiments behind the headline were clearly well meant with Ross Gregory telling us that the Blues man ‘reminded all England fans what the Three Lions are missing’.

“The Republic of Ireland keeper, 33, put in another assured display at a time when Fabio Capello’s England are lacking a dominant No 1,” he wrote.

In another slow day for news, the Mail used the aftermath of the World Cup qualifying campaign to dissect the battle for the wing slots in Capello’s World Cup squad.

Matt Barlow believes that despite scoring against Belarus Shaun Wright-Phillips ‘must be considered the last in line of the right wingers’.

Barlow has decided that Aaron Lennon, Theo Walcott and David Beckham all have stronger claims than our man despite the statistics showing that SWP last night managed 21 accurate passes from 25 attempts giving him an 84% success rate. He also had three tackles which for a player out of position on the left doesn’t seem such a bad return to us!

It was a subject that also exercised the mind of Jason Burt in the Telegraph – all the papers had acres to fill – who pontificated thus:

“In effect Lennon and Wright-Phillips may well have been auditioning for one place when Capello comes to selecting his World Cup squad. The former is the favourite.’

Not in these parts!