THE papers were full of Mark Hughes’s not-so-subtle touting for the top OT job before kick-off on Sunday — very similar in tone, it must be said, to his sniffing around Big Sam’s seat the week before.

PREEN, PREEN. Another good shout from me last week: “A 2-2 draw would be fine, thanks. Though Fergie will be demanding a lot more, such is his mood.”

HERE’S a line you won’t often see inthese columns: thank you Chelsea.

SO much for the post-international break hangover we were all dreading, eh? Mind you, Rio Ferdinand was still crying about yet another aborted Russian invasion by occidentals before kickoff on Saturday: “I couldn’t contemplate watching the European Championship finals without England in it, that is unthinkable.”

I’LL say one thing for these international hiatuses — they do at least allow such rubber-necking free-loaders as your correspondent to slope off to Paris for a weekend of World Cup rugby and heavy drinking, for which I give my thanks.

FORGIVE me for the even heavier air of smugness I am exuding this week but having predicted the Roma match score here last week (and cleaned up at the bookies) I was then thrilled to see the dam burst on Saturday, thus — at long bloody last — fulfilling my weekly promise here that all these strikers would one day pay off.

SO, how was it against Roma last night?

IF I may get all Arnie on your ass for an intro: farewell Jose, The Terminated, and enter Coneman The Barbarian, as Avi Grant has been so cruelly dubbed. I note Mrs Grant also made a splash, so to speak, in the weekend papers here for ingesting her own urine on Israeli tv.

THE call came into my news bunker one night last week.

YET another wretched international break with its enforced trips to Tesco with the wife — although one is disturbed to note that, for the second successive such hiatus, Reds might be grateful for the pause in play.