The news has been out there for a few days — but on Tuesday, Toronto FC finally made it official: Midfielder Hogan Ephraim is no longer on loan to the club.

It used to be that a match against the English was pretty well in the territory of “automatic win” for Canada. But the English beat the Canadians in the Cyprus Cup final and dominated Sunday’s friendly. That’s right — dominated.

If Darel Russell impresses TFC coach Ryan Nelsen enough to earn a contract, the stability of an MLS club might be a welcome change.

English Premier League appearances have been few and far between for Mississauga’s Simeon Jackson — but Canadian soccer followers can hope that his pretty lob goal in FA Cup play Saturday can jump start his season.

He signed with QPR in the off-season, a move to a London club which had decided to open the wallets. But, so far, it wouldn’t be unfair to speak of the move as disastrous.

The real difference to the English game would be the fact that, outside of Southern basement dwellers Reading and Queens Park Rangers, the non-playoff teams would all still have something to play for outside of relegation.

So we went under the website’s hood and looked at the analytics. And, we were able to rank our 11 most-read stories of the year. Now, we present them in order.

Canadian striker Iain Hume opened his Doncaster Rovers’ account in a 2-0 win over at Leyton Orient Saturday.

This is simply a statistical look at how the teams have performed. But it is compelling. Outside of the Habs, the North American sports teams have a history of slumping badly once their owners go and invest in the world’s most popular league, the EPL. And, for Red Sox fans, Avalanche fans and the like, it’s absolutely justified to have a case of little man syndrome — based on the stats.

But that was still a low-key pursuit, nothing like the free agency of Junior Hoilett which we saw this summer, where he was linked to several Premiership clubs and Bundesliga sides. There was interest in a Canadian player like we haven’t seen before.