Ah these are the Summer Sundays I remember as a kid with beautiful blue sky and a blazing hot sun as the Wimbledon Final takes place. It's hard to imagine that the football season will be upon us sooner than we could expect (even this week we had Europa league games !!!) and the Ashes hasn't even started. Of course all this hot summer weather means that the stories we read about transfer rumours are generally even harder to accept than normal and I, for one, am just sitting back and enjoying the summer - hope you are all too.

Yesterday saw the start of the Tour de France and today saw the stage win for someone, who I believe, has a reasonable claim to be up there as the current greatest British sportsman. If to be great you have the respect of all your opponents, you have the confidence to win when you're expected to win and the arrogance to predict you will win more - then he fits all those criteria. So well played Mark Cavendish and congratulations on today's stage win and here's hoping you get to Paris this time and win on the Champs D'Elysee.

Oh and for a bit of fun and seeing as the Ashes team for the first test was announced this morning here's an Aussie cartoon showing the history of the little urn.

p.s. Apologies for lack of footie chat (again!) but there's plenty else on offer

I think that, on the whole, Gazidis has settled in quite nicely at Arsenal and his interview yesterday about the manner in which Arsenal want to and will strive to operate as a football club sits with me very well. His other comments about a salary cap tell more about his roots than of his real understanding of the "art f the possible" in the modern and more global world of football. American sports have always operated on the basis of trying to ensure there's a level playing field or, at least, an attempt to find one. With salary caps and the draft system favouring the weaker teams from the previous season, their method has some merits.

However, it's engrained in their system and that is so unlike the world of the modern footballer. With players able to move across the globe is it really possible that UEFA or FIFA will see this as a issue that they want to address? Platini himself goes on and on about the Premier League or Real Madrid being obscene but he knows that aside from the clubs themselves deciding it's in their best interests then it ain't gonna happen  - even if it's something the EU wouldn't object too since Rugby has used salary caps in both codes.

Nope I'll be quite happy to see us go on the path we are following and we might suffer from a results and success perspective but if it means that Arsenal are still here in 50 years time then that's all right by me. As for Madrid and Man City et al, good luck to them in handling all those egos and wasting huge salaries on individuals who deserve little of it.

As I write this blog today I'm nowhere a PC or Mac, heck I don't even think I can see another person let alone any computer. Yes I've managed to write my first blog via an iPhone and on some levels that seems quite cool. OK it's only cool on a geek or gadget or boy's toys sort of level but it's still fun to be doing it BUT it ain't perfect. Just like with the Mac I can't see any toolbar above the main area for writing in. So as a result of these minor issues there are no links to any news or stories in this blog. I did think of doing it in the code view but that's just too much effort and way too geeky! Anyway I can browse other web pages easily as I write so can talk about Wenger's lack of desire to go to Real Madrid (see Daily Telegraph website) as he wants to continue with the project at Arsenal. Now whatever some fans may feel about lack of trophies then this man's loyalty in the face of huge money and the opportunity to manage one of the greatest clubs in the world deserves some reciprocal feelings in return, from fans and players. It's a critical season for these players to show they deserve such faith and for Wenger to solve some of our defensive failings. Our role, as always, is to provide the right level of support and not to be too afraid to voice our fears but not to turn on the club or single out scapegoats. That as we know can be a hard balance to find. Oh and you get no paragraph breaks!

It seems that most of Europe seems to be baking at the moment and so the weird minds of journalists will be twisted even more by the high temperatures and scorching sun stroke. So please feel even more inclined to ignore any implausible ravings that you might see. Yesterday Melo was being recommended to join Arsenal by Gilberto and today he showed he don't think much of our old player by immediately signing a new contract. C'est la vie?

In L'Equipe it seems awfully quiet with stories of players going to Leicester and Forest hitting the transfer radar! The Swiss still have Wimbledon to talk about with words on Roger's imperious triumph and how their mere No2 nearly killed off British hopes for the billionth time. Isn't that an indictment of UK sport that a country as small as Switzerland manages to get two tennis players in the top 10 (Wawrinka has slipped a little lately) and we have one great white hope. It's not jsut Switzerland either, look at Spain, France, Germany and they all produce 100s of decent sportsman in all fields. 

Then you cycle around Switzerland, France or Germany and you realise that every small village has a decent football pitch, tennis courts, swimming pools etc and the UK... well we know the answer to that. Even if they had them I'm not sure we could drag the feral rats away from their playstations.

And talking of technology does anyone else have problems with writing their blog on a Mac? I never see the bar for links, photos etc when I use the mac but it's fine on firefox on a Vista PC. Will it work if I try on my iPhone - maybe I'll try tomorrow..

I think it's a combination of the hot weather, the other sport on TV and the general need to ignore anything written by the media that makes it so very hard to get any words down in a blog. Anyway after the Lions got beaten at the weekend, Andy Murray is showing us his "Henman" side so far and England are losing to Germany.. it's not a great week to be British! It could all change of course over the next couple of hours but we really don't do winning particularly well.

Watching the U21 game it's interesting to see Walcott operate as a lone striker though there are two obvious problems. Someone needs to tell the England players that lumping up to a small striker playing against some 6ft+ giant is never going to work. Secondly if you play a lone striker you better get support up to him quickly otherwise he'll just be isolated.

Anyone else seem to notice how these U21 players all look incredibly old. I know the rules state you have to be U21 at the start of the competition but even so both sides seem to have some old men playing.

Oh well off to play with my new iPhone now..

How would you like to go to the best supported league in the world?

Would you like to be able to stand on a terrace?

Of course, you might like to drink a beer whilst watching the game as well...

And, finally, how much would you like to pay for this experience?

Well for €140/155 you can get a SEASON TICKET at SC Freiburg, who have just been promoted to the Bundesliga this coming season. Here are the details of the other prices and the price to attend a game is only around €10-20 to stand on the terraces. Current ST Holders can renew these over the next couple of weeks but I'm hoping I can get a couple for next season. Even if I go to 5 games a season it's still cheaper than the UK and the atmosphere/experience is great, the beer is €2.50, a wurst is the same and it's like proper old football again.

Meanwhile the Premier League still tries to wrench more money for a few live games and spend its millions on (mostly) mediocre players...

I thought it was time to start browsing some of the local media for any stories or rumours as I then have the challenge of the translation to keep me interested even if the story itself is a complete load of bollocks! The Swiss are currently all talking about their two big sporting stars, Federer and Cancellara. I guess most readers will have heard of the first but maybe not the second. Federer is pretty much expected to break Sampras's record of tennis Grand Slams at Wimbledon whilst Cancellara won the Tour de Suisse as ideal preparation for the Tour de France in 2 weeks time.

So that means very little football news (though the Swiss season starts again in July to allow for a long winter break) in the local papers. The main story is the Confederations Cup since the Swiss have such an easy group in their WC Qualifiers that they may make it to South Africa next year. Though I did like the story that Ronaldo has been offered a deal worth 20,352 hamburgers (why!!!!) a day and it's not enough apparently.

Meanwhile over on L'Equipe (a right proper sports paper) has its own version of the Sky Sports ticker with a "les transferts en direct" page. Always useful to read and compare to any UK site's take on a particular story. It seems Espanyol are the buyers of the day, having signed Makamura and Saharthough I don't think that's going to suddenly mean a lot. As for Arsenal interest... nope not a lot though the story of Owen to Hull made me laugh.

Well I can discuss the signing of Belgium defender Thomas Vermaelen from Ajax as it is an OFFICIAL signing now and not a rumour, a story from an "inside source" or even just some web gossip. But the problem is I can't say too much. I've never seen him play and I'm not scouring Youtube for some clips that make him out to be a cross between Franz Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore - these videos are surely put on the web by agents, aren't they? All I do know is that a) we need a cedntre half and if Wenger thinks he's the answer that's fine (but remember Senderos & Cygan!) b) Ajax didn't make the CL last season and c) He will get time to fit into the club.

There we go then, we have a new player and it won't stop there being many fans saying we need many more or web sites saying we are about to sign x, y and z... but he doesn't even get a picture on the little oleole.com link!

That seems to be the gist of every blog and every message board across the land as someone in the FA pushes a few buttons, chats to the Police, the fans and trys really hard to piss off Sir Alex. It's rather amazing how much debate can be generated by the publication of a set of football fixtures that, in essence, we already know. We know that all 20 teams play each other, home and away, over a period of roughly nine months. It's always been that way but now it all has to be (over) ANALYSED to the nth degree as fans, pundits and journalists try and determine whether this (relatively) random set of matches gives one team or another an advantage.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a bit of a "Pub type" debate about it and with no "proper" football for over 11 weeks the media have to write about something, it can't all be transfer rumour. However, I seem to remember the days when all we really needed was to know where and when we were going to be on the first day of the new season. That was all that we needed to keep us going over the summer months (well those who couldn't actually enjoy other pursuits or sports for 10 weeks or so). 

And the thing is that even that pleasure has been taken away from us because despite knowing the first game of the season, we really don't yet know when it will take place. For that privileged information we await the decision from the people in real control, SKY TV. For it is they who determine the fact that fans have to travel silly miles on a Monday night or for a Saturday lunchtime kick off.

For me, that's the real issue and not who we play when but who determines it. It buggers up any plans I have to come back (by plane) as until the TV executives actually publish the "real" fixture list I can't book a flight or plan a thing so let's save these discussions until July or whenever they come out.

Well it is out here in Switzerland where I seem to get sun burnt despite wearing T-shirts, hats and cream... Damn the hot burning ball of flame.

Meanwhile as I peruse the various blogs it does seem that most of them are suffering from varying degrees of the annual summer madness. There's only so many ways you can talk about nothing (as this blog is probably managing quite badly) or, at the most, something vaguely interesting. Never mind we can get through this summer of rumour with a little bit of U21 football (well at least it has some Arsenal interest), the Ashes, the Tour and anything but anything to avoid the rumours.

Cesc did show his frustration with the whole media (and the worst of the Spanish media at that) way of spinning half a sentence or even just a word to fit into a story that they had already written. There, in a nutshell, is the problem with modern journalism. Instead of going out and discovering a story, analysing it and then writing it we get journalists who think of a story (truth, half truth or bollocks), search around on the net for some vague quote or half story that backs up their story and then write it. In the same way as TV prepares for big games with the story of the game already written the written press do the same and, in a way, it's not surprising. It's far easier to write the story before the game/interview etc as then you don't actually have to pay much attention to the real facts just the ones  (or perceptions) that you need.

No wonder anyone can be a journalist these days.