I can sum up the difference between last night (watching an England game) and any given Saturday (Wednesday/Sunday etc.) watching Arsenal by the moment when Shevchenko equalised for Ukraine last night. I wasn't out of my chair screaming obscenities at Ashley Cole (laughing at his performance most of the time) or Terry or Ferdinand. I sat there, sipped a little bit more beer (Feldschlossen) and carried on looking through the channels at the France, Italy or Wales games. A part of me saw it coming, based on the England performance in the second half, and a part of me couldn't care what happened. I was content ( not happy or delirious) when England went back in front but there were no cheers or screams of delight...

Compare this to the forthcoming match this weekend against Manchester City. If (and I hope it's a big if) the same situation arises on Saturday then I will be screaming abuse at any City equaliser and jumping all over my mates at the stadium if we win in the last five minutes.

E-M-O-T-I-O-N is there with Arsenal and I lost any semblance of that with England a long time ago. I'm happy if they win and upset if they lose undeservedly but to such a small degree that it doesn't ruin my evening or life in the way Arsenal can f##k it up...

It wasn't always the case as I used to go to Wembley all the time in the 80s/early 90s and it probably reached the end point after Euro 96. All the nouveau fans had  arrived and though I had a great time during that tournament (partly due to getting access to VIP bars pre and post match at Wembley it has to be said) the game had left the "traditional" fan behind. In fact, I really saw the difference during Euro 2008, where as a volunteer I had my most enjoyable tournament, making friends and meeting other football fans with no England team even present.

So let's just wait and see who's fit to play on Saturday shall we.

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..

Trying to read through the sporting press around here means that you invariably look at L'Equipe as a sports paper should provide many juicy nuggets of interest. However, as it's Interlull week we get story after story regarding Les Bleus but there seems to be little critical comment on the manager and whether he will go or stay after this weekend's game against Roumania. From an Arsenal perspective it seems that William Gallas and his penis have an injury that may or may not result in him missing games fro the club. Let's hope so because as he admitted himself he hasn't exactly been playing that well and Arsene seems reluctant to actually drop him and give, say, Djourou a go.

Meanwhile Chelsea are suffering from the credit crunch (despite Roman's millions) and are trying to achieve Peter Kenyon's goal of being self sufficient as a football club by trying to claim back the fees for Mikel. It seems this money grabbing bunch of suits that runs this mockery of a club will do anything to get a few quid but are happy to lose £12M on Shaun Wright Phillips.

As it's an England game tomorrow and the English media are now convinced they are world beaters (based on one good performance) until they are losers (based on one bad performance) I tried to think why I have such little affection for the England team. I mean, up until around 1996 I even went to games on a regular basis. Granted, there was the euphoria of 1990 and the European Championships in 1996 but there has been a lot less love recently. I think it stems from the 90s when suddenly everyone became an England fan and the media hype went into overdrive so you get the flags, shirts for 3 weeks in June. Add to this the rivalry with clubs such as Man Utd and Chelsea, who provide many players who you hate week in week out and then are supposed to cheer for England, it makes it hard. However, of all the strange things that can happen I found myself agreeing with Rio Ferdinand this week when he actually spoke some sense - long may it continue.

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.

Trying to come up with something to say during an Interlull (TM: Arseblog) is quite difficult as all media attention turns towards the England team, once the stories on Newcastle and Spurs have finished anyway. What surprised me was that the forthcoming fixture between England and Kazakhstan has actually sold out. Yep 90,000 people will be paying on average £40-50 ( I think ) for a game that many of them would have had no intention of going to after the recent Andorra game.

Yet one decent performance, the arrival of a young star and the realisation that Capello might actually know what he is doing means that now England will win the World Cup in 2010 and all must jump aboard the bandwagon. Will this mean that Capello's team can overcome the fear factor of Wembley or will the crowd just exacerbate the situation. We'll see at the weekend....

You read a lot about the manner in which the Far East adores the Premier League and having been in Singapore/Indonesia for nearly 2 weeks you can see it to a degree. The problem has been that since I arrived all we've had are the good old Internationals. Yes you can see these games out here but there isn't the same interest. Apparently when the Premier League games are on there is a square in the centre of Singapore that broadcasts the big games to a huge local and ex-pat audience on big screens outside the bars. Since the games kick off between 7.45pm and 2.30am on a Saturday it can be a great experience. I'm hoping to see the Liverpool and Arsenal games down there tomorrow night - assuming my friend and I get a pass out.

One thing is for sure, you don't miss many games out here, from whatever league you want to watch. There are so many football channels and sporrts channels that you can always find the game you want to see. They even got to see the England game, unlike most of the population of England itself.

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.

I see that the mighty England managed a spectacular win against all that is Andorra and the rest of the UK teams played a variety of ex-Soviet Union states in those other so called important World Cup qualifiers. Look I love football and I do get excited every time there is a major international tournament coming up. However, qualifiers are dull and even the most ardent fans struggle to get too warmed up for them. We, therefore need a new system to sort this out.. OUCH!!!

Sorry about that I just got hit on the head by a fruit dropped by my resident holiday flat mate - a little bat. It must be much simpler being a bat in this world I think you'll agree.

Anyway back to the qualifiers and it seems that FIFA should be adopting that successful UEFA model entitled the Champions League. In this competition all the teams from countries with more money (i.e. Bigger TV audiences) get more teams to the back end of the tournament (group stages) whilst the others knock themselves out in 3 qualifying rounds. Henceforth there will be 32 teams at the World Cup with big European countries, South American and Asian countries too .. OUCH!!!

These bats eat a lot of fruit.

Meanwhile countries with no big TV money (i.e. poor African or South American or Scotland) have to fight it out to reach the final 32. It makes as much football sense as the current Champions League.

Please can we have some real football again soon.