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Anyway, it seems that Nasri managed to pull a "Ryan Giggs" and get himself withdrawn from the French team last night - about time we started doing this though, in all probability, he is actually injured and will unavailable for Rosicky length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

I think I surprised myself last season (my first season away from England) by managing to get back for 11 home games at Ashburton Grove. Now I know there are many football fans who travel miles every week but I feel flying back from Switzerland on a regular basis must get me some sort of kudos, though not that much.

Anyway the routine starts all over again this weekend with my flight at lunchtime today, game (WBA) tomorrow lunchtime and late flight back tomorrow evening. Here's hoping I don't get delayed as much as my last trip back from Heathrow T5 (it's first week open!).

So what's going to be different this season and what will be the same as always. As each and every year Spurs expect this year "to be the year" and they've certainly spent on quality but it's a different prospect once expectation meets reality. I don't see them struggling like last year's opening but how well they do will completely be determined by how the new players gel in the fast and furious world of the Premier League. Apparently Michael Owen is injured so no change there along with half of Arsenal's midfield (so no change there either) and Rosicky is expected to be put in cryogenic stasis until a cure can be found for his hamstring strain. Everything else is up for grabs as they say and we'll know more in 3-4 weeks though the new age fashion of hyping up a club after a good win in the first game of the season (or "club in crisis" if they lose) will be bigger than ever.

As you may know Ido like my cycling so I also hope all the recording times have been set so I can gorge myself on Olympic track cycling finals when I get back home. I know it's a bit of a sacreligious thing to say but there are other things outside football.

as I sit here with a decent bottle of Crozes Hermitage flicking around the channels for a little football, though, to be honest, I only started looking after I finished watching a very good film. If you get the chance (and especially those of you who want to know what life was like in the 80s in parts of England) have a watch of "This is England" - it's a bit raw (in language and content) but there is a superb acting performance by a very young kid.

Anyway, where was I, oh yes football tonight and if the Champions League qualifiers are bad then don't even get me started on UEFA Cup qualifiers - I see Manchester City are struggling against a technically good Danish side but you feel the wealth of the Premier League is far more important for Mark Hughes and his asylum seeking boss.

Of course I'm more excited about coming back this weekend for the first hom egame of the season against WBA. However, the excitement is only partly due to the match and more to do with the pre match banter - having a drink with mates I haven't seen for three months is more important than football. In fact, there has been many a time when we're sitting, drinking a pint and there is that communal feeling that we should stay in the bar and watch it on TV - we never do, of course, but it's tempting sometimes.

Oh and I haven't mentioned last night, I didn't see our game as it wasn't shown on nay of the stations I receive but I saw part of the Liverpool game and it sounds a similar game. Passionate crowd, decent side and we got the goals at the right time. I watched a bit of the Basel game and thankfully they did okay - so the return leg is wide open. There is still hope for Basel to be in Arsenal's group!

I always find these qualifying games rather strange and, yet, they are, for many clubs, the most important fixtures of the season - just ask Rangers. Are you old like me and do you remember when the first fixture was the opening league game? It seems a long time ago and many clubs have been playing for over a month now - seems rather pointless to bother with pre-season friendlies really. Perhaps we should just call them "between-season" friendlies from now on.

Anyway tonight the Arsenal Schoolboys play against some big lads from Holland - hopefully teacher hasn't let them go and find some Dutch cafés with unexpected side effects. I'm sure most English school trips to Holland normally end up with arrests  or visits to "massage parlours" or was that just my understanding?Since Jens has now left our average age must be near to being under 20 so perhaps Arsene is attempting to reproduce the great Ajax winning side of 1995 who won with a fair few kids.

There are many blogs having a dig at Arsene or the Board or other such like and so I'm not going to go down that route. As a fan I understand the arguments and even the need to let off steam but I can't change it and, more importantly, we don't have enough inside knowledge to really know why Arsene/Arsenal do what they are doing. It could be money orientated (either lack of cash from the flats or just a tight wage structure), it could be Arsene's desire to keep the moral high gorund or not upset his kids - who knows? Whatever the reasons the club plays a game with 11 players and we support them whatever. Crucially though we can only keep drawing people in to the Stadium (at our prices) so long as the football is both good (usually) and competitive (probably) - let's hope someone knows what they are doing.

One question I would ask is this: If Arsene (as many have said) is coming close, in some supporters eyes, to be questioned as whether he's the right man for the job - who would anyone really like to see in the hot seat instead? Of course, this question has to be answered at some point in the future (as has the replacement for Old Red nose) but do we want to address it now?

Anyway - flying back on Friday for the WBA game and a pint of London Pride (the most appropriate drink for all Gooners)

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!!!!

But I can't help but get fascinated by the golf majors, especially when the European players are doing so well and it takes your mind off the fact Arsenal seem to need to get George Graham, Liam Brady & Michael Thomas out of retirement for our weakened midfield.

It seems this topic (as always) is covered by the inimitable Arseblog but none of us really know what Arsene is planning or perhaps, more worringly (to some), what is behind the thought process. No one really knows if we have financial constraints (due to credit crunch, Highbury flat sales or is it a just a long term strategy) or if Arsene is planning to follow up the invincibles with the toddlers - a team so young that goes on to win the quadruple in nappies.

I don't know and though I care about the team I can't change any of these things and Monsieur Wenger has brought far too much pleasure to my watching of football that I'm not going to get all uppity or worried by it all.

The supposed "soon to be announced" transfer of the Swiss player (UK tabloid/broadsheet story) still has no wild headlines in the local press, despite the fact that any Swiss player going to a Premier League club is headline news.

Not much in the European press but I saw this just a minute a go - Ivan Campo to Ipswich which seems a strange ending to a career

Yesterday in the Guardian there was a story regarding Arsenal being about to sign a Swiss midfielder, Gokhan Inler, from Udinese. Now there is nothing new in a paper writing some sort of "so and so is going to join this club or another" but it's interesting when looking at the story from living here in Switzerland. The same story was in the local Swiss press on Monday and it seems that all the English paper has done is scoured around the European websites and after a while found it because it's a straight lift really. There is no real evidence but merely talk from the player's agent who apparently "spoke" with Arsene - do we believe it?

Arseblog talks about Arsenal's final pre-season game (against Sevilla) last night - not something I've seen much of and I'm trying desperately to find out if I can get to see our first competitive game against Twente Enschede on Wednesday.

I'm glad the real Olympic sports have started now so we don't have to worry about watching the football and concentrate on strange stuff like Archery, Judo and, this morning, the second of the road races - if you watched this you would have seen the absolutely foul weather conditions they all had to endure.