Do you remember when a Labour "adviser", Jo Moore,  thought that September 11th was " a good day to bury bad news"? It seems that this sort of philosophy (though maybe not so blatant) is present most days of the week. Yesterday, the day after a good result in Villarreal and with the media concentrating on the expected titanic clash between Liverpool & Chelsea, we find out how much money Fiszman mande from his share sale. Not only was it a good investment but by moving here to Switzerland he avoided any Capital Gains Tax - a right load of Bankers out here know these rules all too well. So he flies in to watch Arsenal so he can cream off a nice little 18% extra profit, no wonder I've never seen him on the Easyjet flights I catch home.

If he was such a fan he could, of course, say that little extra profit would be handy for Arsenal FC - the club I support so much but as with most of the people who have far too much than is ever needed, they have to keep it all. He's nowhere near the obnoxious reality of Usmanov but he's still a man who's made a hell of a lot of money off Arsenal (for a risk it has to be said) and hasn't really put that much back in.

Meanwhile, in other unexpected news, our injury list has managed to get back to the same state it was about one month ago. This time, however, it seems our defenders have all suffered, Clichy being added to those we already knew about from Tuesday!

After watching the rather Liverpool centric highlights on Match of the Day last night (that's of course my Arsenal centric perspective anyway!) I was struck by two things regarding the refereeing decisions made during the game. Firstly looking at the two tackles made by Adebayor that Webb deemed both to be yellow cards. If you take each on their own a referee could just about make a case for a booking (putting all our own bias aside) with the first tackle more of a case. However, no football fan or manager would ever think that they warranted together a red card. Referees apply the rules, in my opinion, rather too religiously some times and then, for no apparent reason, in other matches they ignore them completely.

The second point was Alan Hansen's comment regarding Robbie Keane's lunge on Clichy. Hansen said that as Keane got the ball it couldn't be a yellow card. Well listen Mr Hansen maybe you should look up the rules of football since if in the act of getting the ball you endanger the opposition player then it's a foul and, if serious enough, it can be considered a booking. See page 33 ( and below )of the rules of the game here..

"A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following seven offences in a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force:

• kicks or attempts to kick an opponent
• trips or attempts to trip an opponent
• jumps at an opponent
• charges an opponent
• strikes or attempts to strike an opponent
• pushes an opponent
• tackles an opponent"

That last line Mr Hansen tells you all you need to know but why should a well paid pundit actually know the laws of the game.

Oh and one more thing how many times a game does Steven Gerrard dive in the penalty box to try and win penalties..

There's always been something about the Liverpool games that makes me dread them. Firstly there was the period in the late 70s/early 80s when you were never likely to win and they would play pass back to the keeper all day before Rush scored a winner. More recently they have played dull football and yet we never seem to beat them as often as we would like and the Liverpool centric pundits would always harp on about how it's good for the game if Liverpool challenge for the title. So I've never really enjoyed these games and today was no exception.

We took the lead in a fairly scrappy and hectic first half, saw Keane lunge in on Clichy (which could have seen him sent off but being Liverpool there was no chance of that), defended badly to concede and then saw Adebayor sent off for two innocuous challenges. However, since Liverpool looked the more likely victors when we had 11 men on the field it was good to see the passion and commitment (so often missing this season) when we were reduced to 10. I'd love too think it will galvanise us for the Villa game but I'm not holding my breath!

Let's now wait and see what ex-Liverpool players such as Hansen and Lawrenson say about the sending off on MOTD!

As the rain teems down here in Basel I can finally relax after last night's roller coaster of a game. Despite the fact that Fenerbahce never really threatened to win the game (even at 2-1 it was only a few minutes before we scored the third) there was a real relief when Alex Song scored just after half time. Even allowing for the fact that we only had one regular defender playing in Clichy I'm sure I'm not the only one to think that Almunia was up there for Man of the Match last night.

However, I'm not going to let that worry me and for the rest of the year I implore fellow Gooners to sit back, buckle up tight and enjoy the ride we're embarking on this year and, hopefully, for a few more years to come. It will be nerve racking, stimulating, remarkable, unpredictable and, sometimes, a little depressing but it's better than being boring or just fielding multi-million pound bought players. Well that's my view anyway.

Meanwhile, here in Basel, the local team are getting ready for the visit of the mighty Barcelona and, with a mere nil points so far, they need some luck, divine intervention of great magnitude or a really wet pitch to maybe get a result. Well the rain here has been constant for 2 days so maybe, just maybe we'll get repeat scenes of the Switzerland v Turkey game  (see below)during Euro2008 but I still think it's asking far too much. However, Barcelona have been know to slip on a few banana skins so let's wait and see.

After watching the Bolton game on Saturday evening out here in Switzerland it seems that we might just get the better of the pundit situation. Looking at forums such as AWIMB there was a lot of anger directed at the pundit provided by Setanta, Craig Burley I think. He apparently questioned all sorts of things about the team Wenger picked and then, when the team proved successful, failed to admit to his mistakes (no change there probably). In the late evening I then watched Match of the Day where those two so-called experts, Shearer & Lawrenson, proceeded to call Gael Clichy a "jessie" for his badly bruised (and nearly broken) leg injury after your friend and mine, Kevin Davies, "tackled" him. It wasn't a two footed lunge but it was a tackle with such force and intent that, although he touched the ball first, was likely to result in an injury to an opponent. As such it was a minimum of a yellow and could have been given a red.

Meanwhile, on Premier (German coverage with a Premier League worldwide feed) the pundit was, I think, ex-Spurs player Gary Stevens. Despite his connection with our nearest and dearest he was remarkably objective and didn't seem to pander to the stereotypes that most UK commentators and pundits do. His view on the tackle was thought through and not a knee-jerk reaction and he was correct in his view of the way Bolton played in the second half, they should have been 4-1 down but could easily have equalised and played with intentsity and passion but were not overly physical. Maybe the problem is that in the UK, Sky & Setanta are like Talkshite radio and have to "hype" games up all the time whereas for foreign audiences the commentary is more considered. Whatever the reason it's not quite so annoying watching Arsenal play on TV over here.