When the rumour fields lie parched and barren. When you need a helping hand. When times get rough. When you feel that you can't go on. When the choicest nugget of tittle-tattle in today's Sun is some arm-chancing wiffle from actually-quite-good baby-faced Russia goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev about fancying a go sitting next to Ben Foster and that crazed flailing pole on the Manchester United bench at some stage next year.

At times like these the Mill usually puts on its brave face. It's a very good brave face. It quivers with sickly piety. It seems wise and sad and strong. It involves a jutting of the jaw and a faint, wistful smile. It's the kind of face worn by a high-end American soul diva, perhaps Whitney Houston, while singing a really slow, quivering ballad about getting dumped, or being proud and strong and strongly taking pride in your strength while loving you for being you loving you. The Mill is wearing this face right now. OK, perhaps it's closer to the kind of fearful, beatifically transported face adopted by a middling X-Factor hopeful while belting out a disturbing version of The Greatest Love Of All that inserts a kind of panting, husky "huhhhh" in between each word of the song.

But it's still a face that has served the Mill well, particularly when it finds itself reporting the news in today's Sun that it's "NO SEX PLEASE WE'RE ENGLISH... DETERMINED Fabio Capello has laid down the law to the Wags as England plot their challenge for World Cup glory".

The Mill is still wrestling with the disturbing – and even disgusting –notion of Fabio Capello actually knowing about sex, or thinking about it ever. Or worse sitting the Mill down in a small railway station cafe, ordering two banana milkshakes, removing his glasses, frowning, slowly rubbing his eyes and beginning to talk in a quiet voice about "when a man and a woman really like each other" while the Mill flushes and stares at the door and tries to pretend it didn't just hear him say the word "vagina" in his halting, blunt, heavily-accented English.

"Boss Capello has ruled his current squad can have just one day with their partners and families after each game next summer."

Which actually doesn't sound too bad. One day a week. There you go. Ooops. Time to get on the bus. Cheers. Off you go... Now. Snooker anyone?

In more familiar surroundings, West Ham are on the verge of signing someone described as "Mexican free agent Guillermo Franco", who used to play for Villarreal, carries a small knapsack, chews wearily on some kind of spitting tobacco and at the end of each 30-minute episode of gentle, feel-good made-for-TV Guillermo Franco vehicle The Mexican Free Agent, walks off slowly into a retreating sun down a gently winding cinder track, disappearing into the middle distance with a carefree swing of his poncho while a country-ish voice a bit like Willie Nelson sings "don't keep me in, don't follow me, don't miss me when I'm gone, I'm the Mexican Free Agent and I've gotta be rolling on" and some really fast tiny credits whizz down the screen.

Meanwhile handsome, brooding 1970s chain-store knitwear model Juande Ramos is the new manager of CSKA Moscow. CSKA will play Manchester United in the Champions League. Igor Akinfeev plays for CSKA. What does it all mean? Perhaps the Mexican Free Agent might know. But he's long gone.

In The Mirror it's FAB BANS WAGS. Apparently "Some plan to stay on the isle of Mauritius three hours away by plane. They will fly in for matches – but will see the players only after the games."

This sounds like an unnecessarily complicated way of getting in the paper. Also in the Mirror, "Beckham gets World Cup nod from Capello", which is so obviously not true, and so clearly a desperately stretched headline drawn out from some bland, non-committal remark that the Mill can't be bothered to read it. Hull are now giving a trial to Glauber Berti, who will wear his T-shirt that says: "I played for Brazil once. Really. Yes, really. Look it up on my Wikipedia page then."

And Arsène Wenger has "issued a transfer warning", albeit the kind of transfer warning that makes him sound slightly deranged and sweaty and like he's in a film directed by Martin Scorsese where he's just completed a massive deal involving brown leather suitcases full of cocaine and he's about to attack someone with a tyre iron.

"If you ban players from moving before the age of 18, you know what will happen? The player will be sold anyway. To whom? To agents. At what age? At 13, 14. Where will they go? Not to top-level clubs with top-level education," Wenger said, answering all his own questions in an Al Pacino-style voice and doing lots of eh-whaddaya-gonna-do shrugging.

The Mail believes Bryan Robson is about to replace Peter Reid as Thailand manager. The Mill wants to know who exactly is running Thai football? A publican? Or someone with an England World Cup 1986 midfield fetish? Who's' next? Steve Hodge and Trevor Steven?

And yes, David Beckham. More David Beckham. Because Beckham's people have been talking to some other people who have sub-contracted out to some other people a story on Sky Sports Italia via Goal.com that "a deal has already been struck" to take the bandy-legged hobbling horse with the jumper-sleeve tattoos back to genteel gentlemen's retirement home Milan. Just as soon as he's finished getting into fights with men in baseball caps holding up furious, weirdly phrased hand-painted signs and scoring with a goal-strike free-punt one-pointer against the Miami Chicken Bucket.

And still the Mill is looking saintly and calm and above all forgiving. It's wobbling its lip. But it's not going to cry. Oh no. The Mill is strong.