Football Transfer Rumours: Jack Wilshere for the 2010 World Cup?

When the Mill was growing up all those years ago in its small suburban Milling community in the badlands of the isolated Milling towns in the great industrial Milling belt, it swore it wouldn't ever end up like so many other ambitious young Mills, a slave to the rumor, just another worker ant in the great Milling system. Turning up the collar of its suede Harrington jacket in the bus stop shelter, taking another swig of warm backwash-Martini, and trying really hard to impress some bored-seeming girls who want to go home, the Mill always knew it was different from the others. That it was really going to make something of itself in the world beyond the rumor, the world of World Cups and super-Fab and Roo Beauty.

And that one day it would ride back through this one-rumor town on the back of its thrumming chrome chopper, dressed in bandana headscarf, winkle-picker boots and left-bank philosopher-style overcoat, jaw set against the stale whiff of convention, mind defiantly open to the great swirling world of possibility far beyond the rumors tilled unthinkingly by so many generations of Mill before it. And that crouched in their doorways the Mills would tell their Mill children to come away from the window, would shoo their flushed adolescent Mill daughters inside and as the Mill roared off the horizon in a cloud of Marlboro smoke, would turn to each other and say, "I hear Dietmar Hamann has issued a come-and-get-me-plea in his on-off player-plus-cash swap deal move to Fenerbahce."

This is the way of the Milling community, the closed minds of the career Miller. The Mill swore it would never turn out like that. And finally, today, the Mill has its chance to escape, to shift its gaze to bigger things. Because, for one thing, there certainly aren't any rumors around out there.

But somehow even as the Sun rages "3 LIONS ARE OFF ON SAFARI" and claims "RAMPANT England crushed Croatia in a 5-1 goal-fest last night to reach next summer's World Cup finals. And the style turned on by the Three Lions raised hopes they will roar in South Africa", the Mill can't quite stop its thoughts straying. Mainly towards Alex Hleb's revelation that he was a "Barca loner" during his recent period spent sitting in that stands wearing a suit at Camp Nou and running on pretending to look pleased whenever Barcelona won a trophy. Inter move. Fell through. Should have stayed at Arsenal. Gah. Bluh. Insinuate. Almost feels like a rumor.

Also, in the Sun, news that ,OO-AH AFRICA NOW WE CAN WIN IT SAYS CAPELLO, a fairly loose interpretation of the words "Expectations will be high in South Africa but we have to play to win it because we are England", which sound more like a hand-wringing accusation of inveterate idiocy than a declaration that England can actually win the World Cup.

But wait! It's 'Arry Redknapp. Surely he's got something for the Mill, some tidbit, some whiff of a pal of a source close to the wantaway ace? Buff your tasselled slip-ons Mr Redknapp? Got anything for an old Mill Mr Redknapp? "We have a group of players which cannot be bettered by anyone. We hear a lot about Spain, the European champions, but they do not have any better defenders than John Terry and Rio Ferdinand." Eh? Mr Redknapp?

"I see no reason why we can't go all the way and be world champions like we were in 1966 when Bobby Moore lifted the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley"

It's no better in the Star, where IT'S PERFECT UNDER FAB, a headline that conjures a haunting image of Capello's chiseled, straining face looming into focus, thick black nostril hairs tickling your eyelids, glasses nudging your nose, the reek of his high-end cologne almost overpowering as a single blazered forearm comes to rest powerfully on the point of your oesophagus.

"Times have changed. The players are mentally stronger and this manager knows what he's doing. It has been an Italian job and last night England blew the bloody doors off inside 20 minutes," is the Star verdict, and it's hard to argue with.

In the Daily Mail Jamie Redknapp has news, not of a last-minute bid to hijack of a loan-swap move for a promising Nigerian wing-back, but of "the key men for South Africa". Aaron Lennon. Steven Gerrard. Frank Lampard. Not Michael Owen. The Mill feels its eyes have been opened.

In the Times there's "No stopping Capello's Invincibles". The Telegraph rates Jack Wilshere as having a 4/10 chance of going to South Africa. Jack Rodwell is 7/10. Nedum Onuoha is 8/10. Studded, leather-tipped medieval torture implement Lee Cattermole is 7/10. And why not? Gary Cahill 7/10. The Mill could do this all day, and in fact, probably will.

And wait! Surfacing like a drowning frogman, gorging itself on the pure oxygen of will-he-won't-he transfer wiffle, the Mill can at last report, via Goal.com, that Steve Bruce wants David Healy and Daryl Murphy to go somewhere on loan. Anywhere. Ipswich. Maybe Coventry.

And with that the Mill is going to plug its ears with parsley and spend the evening leafing through some its old scrapbooks of rumors past, closing its curtains against all this strangely unambiguous, non-made-up triumphalism, this deathly absence of tittle or tattle or lazily-embellished might-have-been-but-never-really-was-oh-well-let's do-it-anyway. Stick with what you know. Don't stay too far from the old ways. It's cold out there. So cold. The Mill thought it could break free. It's sorry. It's wondering if there might be any jobs going at the old mongering plant. Anything really, and if maybe, you know, its old room might still be free.