If there's one thing I feel less like talking about than boardroom reshuffles then it's something I've yet to discover. Today the blogs and media are all a frenzy all because Lady Penelope has sold her shares, bought a new pink Rolls Royce and started shagging Parker...

It might as well be the case because this story coupled with the media loving to stir a story up where there is or isn't one has probably worried a few gooners out there. Yes I don't want the fat orange Russian corporation taking over our club and maybe it's more likely now than ever before but I can't do bugger all about it so I'll concentrate on trying to set up my email account on my new iMac. It's a thing of beauty but has caused me a morning's worth of grief to try and get going. Now it's working I can just sit back and ogle it.

Only 2 days to go before I get a flight home for Christmas and the Liverpool game. This game has the misfortune to fall on a rather important anniversary (though to woman all anniversaries are vital - first date, first kiss, first time you went to Ikea together ....) and I may have had a few beers before I get to see her in the evening. If this were to be compounded by a poor result and hence a bad mood on my part, it could all go horribly wrong. So come on Arsenal do your bit please.

Here in Basel we're getting even more snow. That's good for my New Year skiing and not so good for my flight back to the UK for the Liverpool game and Christmas festivities. I was fairly sure that it wouldn't be a problem with the wonderful Swiss transport system but Zurich had so much snow today that their buses stopped running! That just doesn't happen out here. Anyway I'll assume it's all okay for the weekend trip back!

It seems that the madness of football is never ending - first we see Ramos go to Madrid, now he's buying Diarra and Alladyce is back in a job. As for us well there isn't much to talk about though Eduardo's return seems to have been tempered by him coming off with a "strain" - let's just hope he doesn't suffer Van Persie syndrome whereby every return from injury is a long drawn out delicate balance against sustaining another one. Some things never change and Ferdinand's comments about us remind me why I've never liked the goofy looking one - made any more of those really crap TV shows eh Rio?

It's a bit of a ritual watching the Sports Personality of the Year show. It's been getting gradually worse over the years and the BBC try ever more wearisome ideas to "modernise" or bring it to the licence payer (hence the setting in a arena in Liverpool). However, I always watch it (on & off and generally it's been Sky+ed or equivalent so I can miss the truly gruesome bits). This year, a year that was generally agreed to be one of the best years of British sport, what was most obvious was the general lack of discussion or celebration of our wonderful game of football. Aside from a truly generous and sincere standing ovation for Sir Bobby Charloton and a few token nods towards coaches and teams, the game was rightly ignored.

You see the people who were celebrated last night were the people who aren't on the back pages every day of the year (or front pages for drinking, drugs or sex) like many of our pampered footballers. As a bit of a cycling fan I was so pleased to see people like Chris Hoy get justifiable reward for his sacrifice and effort in a tough sport. It wasn't just because of their sporting achievements but the general feeling that many of them were like you and I and didn't feel themselves to be better than you and I. It's a generalistion that is probably unfair on some footballers of today but it would be nice to think that the credit crunch could just hang around long enough to see the hyped up game get dragged down a notch or two....

p.s. Sorry no Arse comment today but I needed to get that off my chest.

p.p.s. Meanwhile here in Switzerland, Basel are in freefall, losing 5-1 to the bottom of the table side yesterday!!!

As you can imagine the delights of the Champions League are not of particular interest in Switzerland (FC Basel tried and failed quite magnificently) as the snow falls. The Swiss want to see people going very fast down hills or, very strangely, people with huge skis go quite slowly on the flat before shooting something or other. So after the end of the group stages the local papers are full of skiing, ice hockey ad the odd nod towards their German cousins by reporting Bayern Munich.

To be honest even I feel about that excited about the whole Champions League Group Stage saga. It goes on and on and at the end of it all the teams that were expected to qualify did with the possible exception of Werder Bremen. It even rendered the whole finish first or second argument redundant as the quality of the two sets of teams is pretty much the same. Finishing second is only that bad if you get a bad draw (i.e Barcelona) but the same can be said for finishing first (and getting Inter Milan). So we'll just wait and see.

Last night's game was poor and I spent most of the evening (or the second half) watching the Lyon - Bayern game as it had meaning and a good contest.

Oh well - let's check the skis before the weekend!!!!

You wouldn't expect anything else really after last Saturday. Arsene has expressed his faith in his player and immediately asked him to go out again after the poor performance. I'm not sure whether Eboué has the mental strength or character to deal with the abuse he got (however undeserved) so it will be interesting to see how he deals with losing the ball or playing a poor pass tonight (hopefully he'll do neither and score a 30 yard screamer!)

I had hoped to glide over the Eboué subject but I hear a podcast today where Graham Poll (not my most favourite person of course) said that he hated dealing with Eboué on the pitch as he was prone to histrionics and losing his rag making it impossible to talk to him. Whatever you think of Mr Poll I can see that in Eboué and that ends up hurting the team. It's something Wenger has either ignored or not really dealt with and that's poor management. A player can be any kind of individual but if it hurts the team in any shape or form then it needs to be addressed.

In more local news FC Basel managed to lose their last game of the group stages to Sporting Lisbon and there's a team that would be most welcome to play against in the last 16 but to do that we have to get at least a draw tonight...fingers crossed.

Thankfully the THIRD international break of the season so far has nearly come to an end and we can chat about the more mundane issues such as Arsenal's defensive injury crisis and how Robin Van Persie can recover from his latest injury (the one he doesn't have yet but will get obviously tonight when he trips over the corner flag and breaks all 206 bones in his body).

For a Wednesday night game there is at least the opportunity to nip into town and have a beer with mates in one of the bars that won't be showing Switzerland's probable defeat to Greece. Hopefully McGuinnesses will be showing all the home nation games as just watching England will be a bit tedious.

Because of this break I've just realised that I'm back again in the UK to watch the forthcoming match against Everton on Saturday afternoon (yes, a 3 o'clock KO) and I haven't missed a home league match despite being in the centre of Europe. I'm just hoping that the current high pressure dissappears as this will lead to fog at Luton Airport and a delay on my Easyjet flight on Saturday morning. I've got a little bit of leeway but I can do without a reduction in the most important part of the day, the pre-match drink. I can't miss out on my London Pride at the Hemingford Arms.

It would be easy to ignore International weeks as an inconvenient blip in the search for glory of your own club side and generally I'm never that impressed with either the quality or excitement provided by International sides at this stage of the season. However, sitting down on a Saturday evening in Switzerland I had the opportunity to watch SIX games live through various channels and what did I learn....

Firstly the games I could watch were: 1) England v Kazahkstan 2) Switzerland v Latvia 3) Serbia v Lithuania 4) Germany v Russia 5) Roumania v France & 6) Bulgaria v Italy and what did I witness.

Well I learnt that:

1) A football fan will watch any game at any time as long as it is interesting and/or exciting which in the case of Roumania v France it certainly was. 2-0 down after 17 minutes France managed to get a draw.

2) Italian commentary is still the best to listen to even if you have no understanding of their language

3) As much as I hate Ashley Cole from an Arsenal perspective, booing a player whose team you've come to support (and after one mistake) is wrong, very wrong

4)How did Lithuania get to the top of their group considering they lost 3-0 tonight.

5)There haven't been many better long range goals than the French equaliser from Gourcuff this evening - watch it if you can...

Oh and one extra thing, Thierry Henry looks old now, don't know why but he just does..

Apparently it is impossible for Robin Van Persie to meet up and/or play with his Dutch team mates without incurring some injury or other. At least this time he tried to get it out of the way early on during the Interlull (!) but he will probably suffer numerous relapses (based on previous history) and will come back in April to help our bid for a UEFA Cup place (pessimistic doom and gloom version). Of course, maybe Arsene Wenger has finally realised a method to remove injury risks from International weeks by provoking minor injuries via a voodoo doll that he will then heal when they return. This would obviously explain the reason Gary Lewin left Arsenal for the England job (optimistic scenario)as he has never been a fan of unorthodox medical remedies.

For such a common occurrence, Van Persie's injury actually made the local Swiss newspaper. However, they suggest an Achilles injury as opposed to the hamstring suggested by Arseblog but I haven't done too much research to check who's right or wrong, only Arsene and his voodoo doll knows.

Meanwhile Switzerland have the difficulty of recovering from their loss to Luxembourg last time round and are pretty much in the last chance saloon this weekend when they play Latvia. The locals don't seem too confident at the moment though.

Maybe Sven knew it all along but was too conservative to give him a go but as the papers will undoubtedly go into THEO overdrive I hope some perspective can be found. Firstly I hope a certain Arsene Wenger who, until now, has been the single most important factor in England's failure to be any good, will be given credit for his nurturing of Walcott. In hindsight, would not Wayne Rooney have been a better (or more consistent)  player if he hadn't been playing every game he could since the age of 16 and ditto Owen (who seems to have too many injuries at a relatively young age now). As I typed that I do realise that Arsenal have been playing Cesc in the same way so maybe his career will struggle as he reaches his mid twenties - it's a fine line I suppose with exceptional talent at an early age.

I haven't seen any of last night's games as I've just awoken here on Bintan but looking through the results I see Switzerland really did manage to be as bad as we probably knew they were. Losing 1-2 to Luxembourg really is a depressing result and makes any of England's poor games in the past seem almost bearable. The local press aren't too please about it. So despite my irrational hatred of International games last night did throw up results that almost made them interesting - Finland drawing with Germany and Portugal losing at home being two of them.

You will have had to be fairly impervious to rumour and internet discussion to fail to realise that we've lost another player this week. Out here in Switzerland this is, of course, pretty big news that Philippe Senderos is off to Milan and many here probably are quite happy about it - Serie A still has a big reputation within the borders of it's neighbour. Arseblog and Gunnerblog have both written about it and, interestingly, Gunnerblog refers to an article about Inler as well. The article states that Inler is staying at Udinese but further down there is yet another rumour regarding Djourou leaving for Rennes! It's probably nothing but I think Arsene's new objective of winning a trophy with the world's smallest and youngest squad seems to be on course!

As a result I think I'm going to concentrate on Basel's attempt to reach the Champions League group stage this week (I'm vaguely confident even Arsenal can't screw up there position against Twente). The game is neatly set at 0-0 with the home leg tomorrow night against Guimaraes and I'm hopeful that the team can make that leap to the biggest stage. It's been a while since a Swiss side made the group stages, it was probably FC Thun's improbable success a few years back that was the last time.