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!!!!

Apparently that's the message I'm getting from Arsenal Football Club in their email to me (please don't stand it's dangerous, it will lose our safety certificate etc) and their announcement of their Anti-Social Behaviour Text Service. I don't have a problem with the need to remove people who exhibit blatant racist or homophobic behaviour but this will give license to the moral upstarts to complain about the bloke who swears at the ref constantly or doesn't particularly like Cashley Cole! People's perception of acceptable behaviour is different and, I would suggest, a football match is a very different environment from a church service. I don't expect to have to have the whole atmosphere (and there's not that much at Ashburton Grove anyway) sanitised constantly. We could learn so much more from the Bundesliga clubs who still stand and still serve alcohol on the terraces!

Yesterday  seemed a very slow football day and I managed to watch the Grand Prix, the Tour de France (where Cadel Evans lost the yellow jersey) and Padraig Harrington winning the Open. However, the quiet of the day meant that so-called quality newspapers in England make up bollocks about Arsenal to sell their crappy papers... Please leave this to the tabloids.

L'Equipe says that Podolski, subject to many rumours, is staying at Bayern Munich this season.