After an awful 10 days the best response was, of course, to go and get the better of the current champions (in both England and Europe - hard to digest though to may be to say that) in a pulsating game. As a result the other Arsenal bloggers have rediscovered some of their optimism regarding fourth place (we'll worry about titles if we get the opportunity), have more to say on the team and found some time to realise one performance against a big side needs to lead to some performances against the smaller clubs.

As with most Arsenal fans yesterday was a chance to actually enjoy reading the Sunday papers and even discover that Old Red nose was actually quite positive about our win if not happy obviously. He did also manage to moan about the fact they play away after all their Champions League games (as much as I hate to say it , that does sound slightly odd) and he thinks, of course, that they were denied a blatant penalty (as opposed to the one on Nasri or the Carrick foul on Diaby both missed by Webb!!). I think I'm pining for the days when he slagged us off all the time as you get the feeling he's being nice is that he doesn't think we're such a threat any more.

Oh and on the subject of Webb, I (and my other STH mates) felt he was awful on Saturday. The incident that summed it up for me was when Rafael threw the ball away in disgust at not being awarded a throw-in and yet escaped a booking. It's petty, I know, but all fans realise that any blatant dissent these days gets a card unless you do it within sight of the Man Utd manager obviously.

On a rather irrelevant but interesting note why did so many players get a brace of goals at the weekend. Off the top of my head I can remember Keane, Nasri, Bent, Tuncay, Anelka & Saha all scoring twice on the same weekend - odd that.

The other good point of the weekend was Easyjet's decision to move the flight from Basel to London from Stansted to Gatwick. Yes it's a bloody early flight but the return from Gatwick is so much better, Stansted is an abomination of an airport that is too small for the huge increase in low cost flying that it has accepted. No security queues, more space and less chavs - what more could I ask.

You travel often in hope rather than expectation but today saw us triumph over the odds. Arriving with four other season ticket holders I can honestly say that none of us (aside from some 20/20 hindsight) saw us winning today but life as football is completely unpredictable. So thanks to Nasri for the 2 goals and thanks to all the players who actually turned up and put in a shift. You don't need to win every challenge but you do need to make every challenge and today we did that so well played all. Just going back to see the end of MOTD here in the UK and so glad to be here for that sort of a game. Oh and BTW the dropped doors was a reference to the 25 minute delay on the flight over!

Having been busy with visitors this week has enabled me to miss all the dull action from the midweek games though the 2 young sons of my guests will probably want to watch some football at some point. However, waking up and quickly looking at the world it seems Arsenal have gone and bought a Manchester United player. Wow - I didn't see that one coming and I'm sure many fans will be wondering if this is Arsene's ONE signing that he has been going on about. Certainly doesn't fit the bill of a central midfielder but what do I know.

Anyway, it seems that Nasri managed to pull a "Ryan Giggs" and get himself withdrawn from the French team last night - about time we started doing this though, in all probability, he is actually injured and will unavailable for Rosicky length periods of time all season!

Unsurprisingly the French/Swiss papers are concentrating on either Olympics or last night's friendl games. France certainly had more joy than England with a 3-2 win in Sweden and the Swiss enjoyed a comfortable 4-1 win over the mighty Cyprus.

Anyway that's those games out of the way for at least 2 weeks then. Maybe we can talk about the more important matches for the rest of the week.

I can just about cope with competitive internationals even if my club side is far more important and relevant to me. However, I cannot understand or even get of bed for these early season friendlies. Why do they always take place so soon after the first game of the season (or before the season starts in Spain & Italy, for example) when players are not fully match fit. Surely it absolutely begs the likelihood of an early season injury, especially for our fragile players.

Following yesterday's blog it has been confirmed that Henry will captain his country this week and he won't get injured now he doesn't play for us, that unfortunate experience awaits Nasri or Gallas I expect.

Am expecting friends from UK later today so better dash and prepare the apartment for their arrival.

As you probably know by now it seems that Arsenal have confirmed that Adebayor has signed a new contract. Now I'm pretty sure he did that last year and then spent most of the summer saying he wanted to leave (or words to that effect) so that leaves two questions. Was it all a ruse to get a better contract and will it all start all over again next July? What I don't understand is the sub headline in the reporting of this story on the Guardian website, how can they say without having a very large tongue in their cheek, "Deal puts an end to speculation linking striker with move abroad".

Erm - yes that's about as concrete as Ronaldo's contract (oops) or, maybe, Fat Frank's new one - they are meaningless bits of paper so let's just move on.

I guess everyone out in ole ole land is getting suitably non excited by the midweek International friendlies that are taking place. I've found some Arsenal news (sort of) as France are thinking of making Thierry Henry captain with the alternative William Gallas - all I can say is that I wish them all the best with that choice! It also seems that due to injuries in the French squad that Nasri is a certainty, so there's another injury for us waiting to happen. The lad himself has some words to say of his arrival at the club on the training, stadium and his debut - he sounds a good lad.

If you've read the odd one of my blogs you may have realised that I try to avoid repeating the articles that many other bloggers out there already do quite well. As a result if you're expecting a match report on the WBA game then this the wrong place. Partly this is down to a personal decision and, secondly, it may be more to do with the fact that I got more excited watching Bradley Wiggins winning the 4000m Individual Pursuit Gold at Bejing (at least Arsenal had the common sense to show the race on the concourse TVs) than by anything much that happened during the game. I'm not being negative about the team but it's probably summed up perfectly by Arseblog's opening line, "So the season starts with a win, three points and a reasonable performance given the understrength nature of the side, particularly in midfield."

However, I will say that Nasri impressed, the beer was as good as usual in the pub before the match, the banter was okay but I'm expecting better performances as the season warms up and I'm not back again until the Hull game so hopefully by then the season will have taken some shape. I'm writing this after all the weekend games and so now have to survive the pointless midweek international friendlies - we have 9 players out injured so expect a couple more to be added to that by the end of the week.

On a more controversial note the main topic of conversation and emails has been the way the online Daily Telegraph fantasy league competition has managed to take a perfectly wonderful format and transform it into something completely unworkable (okay not completely but "if it ain't broke don't fix it" comes to mind). Someone has obviously given the job to some video game software junkie and he's "jazzed" it up thus making it far more complex than it needs to be for no real improvement, Hey Ho!

I'll talk French/Swiss stuff tomorrow but you'll want to know the Basel result, so you'll be glad to hear that they top the table after a 4-1 victory at FC Zurich today.

but, not unfortunately, as the winger we knew and loved in 1998 at Highbury (he's talking of a comeback with his first ever club). It's been mentioned before but Arsenal have only ever really done well when we've had a wide player that both created and scored goals.

The original and best if you think in terms of goals scored was Ted Drake, anyone that scores seven goals in an away game of top flight league football certainly knew what they were doing. However, in the more modern era we've had the joys of George Armstrong, Brian Marwood, Anders Limpar, Marc Overmars and my favourite, Robert Pires.

Since Bob left though it's been difficult to replace him. Hleb had talent but didn't create or score enough and Rosicky struggles to get out of hospital for more than 2 games in a row. So one of the questions this season is whether Nasri can step up and replace the duck waddling boots of our last Frenchman to play out wide. We'll not know for a while but when I first saw Bob I realised what a player we had signed. Not because he scored immediately or beat players and certainly not for his tackling. No, he did the best thing a player can do - he never gave the ball away and was always available, once he got he pace of the league we saw what a player he was.

So let's give young Nasri a chance to shine - once he recovers from his first injury!!!!

I must admit to being more interested in today's Time Trial at the Tour de France than any of the, admittedly very lame, boring non-rumours relating to football or Arsenal this morning. For those of you not up to speed on Le Tour, today sees a 53km individual time trial with the favourite (Cadel Evans) a mere 1 minute 34 seconds behind the leader (Carlos Sastre). Evans is widely regarded as the better time triallist and so should make up that time difference but the power of pulling on the yellow jersey may just help Sastre.

L'Equipe has a short interview (online anyway - the full interview is in the paper) with Samir Nasri on his move to Arsenal, his view of Domemech and his life in England (such that it has been). Nothing earth shattering as you would expect from the modern footballer (even a French one). Apparently he watched a lot of Arsenal and admires greatly their style of play. It seems he will switch from right to left wide midfield as the game develops and not be rigidly on one side or the other. He's also living on his own for the first time and is seeking to live independently, though he has asked the club to provide someone to cook for him! So any gooner chefs out there could help him out.

Also in L'Equipe it seems that PSG can't stop buying and are now after Mateja Kezman.

As I know many of you are now keen Swiss football followers (!!!) especially those in East London after the transfer of the Swiss "David Beckham", Valon Behrami, to West Ham. This weekend is round 3 of the swiss league (though Grasshoppers don't play due to Intertoto Cup) and the three teams with 100% records all play.

I've beenlooking around at most of the Arsenal related blogs and message boards, nobody seems too bothered to see the back of Mr. Hleb. We've actually already got two replacements in Vela and Nasri coming into the squad so it really won't be much of an issue. It also looks as though young Mr Adebayor will be coming back with his proverbial tail between his legs but since there are still 6/7 weeks more of speculation to come we'll wait and see.

Today I spent most of the morning trying to book flights for Arsenal home games. Now it used to be relatively easy to  arrange travel to games as you looked at the fixture list and saw 38 games at 3.00pm on a Saturday. Of course, this has changed over the last 20 years, gradually at first with maybe one or two games on a Sunday. Then Sky arrived and we had Monday night games, we've even had Friday night games and, of course, with Setanta now we have 5 different potential kick off times. Then there is the added component of UEFA cup games on a Thursday which means that any Saturday game could be moved (not because of TV) to a Sunday if you're playing Everton, for example. So before booking any flight it's a search of all potential combinations before hitting the confirm button.With all that in mind, I've booked for 3 games so far - I'm now awaiting the potential CL game combinations before booking any more.

It seems I made a mistake yesterday in saying that Barloworld had pulled out of the tour due to the positive test of Duenas. Anyway Saunier Duval have pulled out today after the positive test on Riccardo Ricco, winner of two stages this year, announced this morning. There had been rumours about Ricci and, unfortunately, they seem to have been confirmed by this announcement.

L'Equipe has rumours of Chimbonda going to Newcastle or Everton , though why anyone would go near a player with his contempt for any club he seems to play for remains a mystery.

20 Minuten continues to look at the start of the Axpo Super League, here in Switzerland, this Friday night. Apparently some clubs ( Young Boys, FC Basel) offer reasonable prices to away fans but not all are so hospitable.

A little French wine was consumed by all last night and today's excursions didn't quite make it to Chablis so we have that to look forward to tomorrow. Just got back in and saw Cavendish win his second stage win of Le Tour. He's only the second British rider to win more than one stage on the same tour - so bien joué Mark.

L'Equipe magazine today is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 1998 World Cup win.  After the performances of the French team in Euro 2008 that really does seem like a very distant past to that glorious era of French football. L'Equipe also has its own transfer rumours of the day plus some actual hard fact, like Nasri finally agreeing the move to Arsenal. In other French news Sagnol hasn't decided yet if he will continue with the French national side

Right better get ready for more vin de la region this evening....