In those mad last few hours of the TW on Monday many rumours were heard or imagined as to why the whole saga took so long. Today we've heard that (graciously!) the other Premier League clubs think the deal was okay but what tipped the balance was when the truth came out as to the Russian's true reasons for coming to Arsenal and England in particular.

We can see below that Arshavin loves a good sing song and felt that England (in particular, London) offered great opportunities for knees up around the piano and with a plethora of Pop Idol and other such talent(less) shows he would get  plenty of chances to show us his true talent as a singer. We just hope Arsene has Simon Cowell's number..

As Sky Sports News ticker goes into 6th gear, then turbo charged and finally warp drive before exploding at 5pm today.... Here's the photo to sum up the whole TW experience.

I usually manage 3x45 minute Spinning sessions during the week at my local gym, which just happens to be located within the FC Basel stadium complex, St. Jakobs. I discovered today that when the team return from their winter break for training they also use the gym as part of their preparations for the resuming of their season. So I'm warming up when the entire first team squad walks past followed by our good old ex-Tottenham manager, Christian Gross, who smiled as I picked up my Arsenal towel in front of him! Many of the players were happy to talk to people and certainly didn't strike me as prima donnas.

I can't quite imagine this happening with any of the Premier League sides (and yes I realise how small the little old Swiss League is) though you could see at at some lower league sides. It always amazes me the sheer physical size of many football teams and Basel, despite not being amongst the European elite (whatever the last 32 place in the Champions League may say), are a big set of lads.

So that was better than talking about the TW. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When I first moved out to Switzerland there were 2 Easyjet flights a day from Basel to Luton which made it perfect for flying back to games on the weekend. Now as I look to book tickets back for the Roma and Fulham games (unfortunately a combination of family events and poor train connections between Plymouth and London mean these are the next games I can get to!!) they've completely buggered up their flight schedules from Switzerland to the UK. I can't even get a Saturday morning flight from Zurich any more so it looks like BA will be getting used more often and my BA miles total will drop quickly. It's not the end of the world in any sense but these changes never seem to be announced whilst I get email after email telling me of NEW routes from Gatwick to Spain or Iceland. What good is that to someone living in Switzerland!!!!

Anyway I have, at least, sorted out my travel plans for that week and let's hope the team finds a bit of spark from somewhere. The most noticeable thing about the game yesterday was the lack of pace all over the pitch, both in terms of our players' movement and the speed with which we moved the ball around. Switching Nasri to the centre and the impact of Vela helped but it wasn't too pretty to watch and you can understand Arsene's desire to improve our creative play at the end of that game.

Anyway off to drink beer and watch the Mancs with some Americans who have no real idea of what goes on but for the privilege of this I have agreed to watch their team (New York Giants) straight afterwards in some play off game. Apparently it will last four hours and we drink lots of beer, well the second bit sounds fine.

Do you remember the days when the New Year was just about parties and resolutions (not meant to be kept of course) rather than the start of this artificially created "Transfer Window". I think most people have forgotten the reason it was even created in the first place (apparently it was to do with differing rules in Europe and the EU negotiations...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz). What does it actually achieve?

Well obviously the most important people during these times are the media, who now have carte blanche to write any rumours, gossip or random guesses they dare to dream up. Since this is, for many, their raison d'etre and they've had four months with no opportunity it's generally seized with gusto! Many websites drop off the radar for weeks only to be reinvigorated by the chance to try and excite fans with stories about Johhny nobody's Mr 15% saying he's definitely* interested in coming to YOUR club!

 So keep calm, enjoy tonight and let the month look after itself.

* - depending on money, other clubs' interest, the weather or his astrological forecast

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!!!

So you're in the centre of Basel and the crowds are heaving (though thankfully nothing like London at its worst) and all you're thinking is shall I check the Arsenal score. You need to know, of course, but it's Middlesbrough away and you just know it's unlikely to be good news. Anyway you treat yourself to some personal christmas presents (a pair of shoes and a shiny new iMac!) before daring to check on your phone how it's going.... hoping .... praying ... that all might be well. Then when the phone browser slowly downloads and the anticipation grows you finally get the disappointing (though thankfully not entirely depressing) news of a 1-1 draw. According to the BBC text it seemed we could of won, could have lost and Van Persie can't shoot for toffee. Was that the correct summary? I shall just have to wait until I get to see the recorded highlights on MOTD tomorrow morning.

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.

Tonight's game against Fenerbahce provides the luxury of English commentary (whose I don't know) on the German Teleclub coverage. As with most parts of Europe the Tuesday and Wednesday games are split and as I can only get ITV coverage (no Sky) I use Teleclub for the Wednesday matches and the language options depend on the attractiveness of the fixture to a Germanic audience. So some games have German/Italian or German/French, for example, and sometimes we get lucky (though the UK commentary if it's Andy Gray makes me switch to the other audio channel).

Anyway forget our game as I feel I need to say a big WELL DONE to my adopted home club for their performance at the Nou Camp last night. Having been thumped 5-0 at home 3 weeks ago this was a remarkable turnaround and the plaudits they have received today are all worth while.