An interview with Matthew Upson in Football365 is headlined 'Upson Fed Up Of Being Stuck In No-Man's Land' - but reading between the lines, there is reasonably good news.

'It made a refreshing change to get out there and play some football,' he said after the Preston game. 'It's hard for me, the manager and the club. There seems no solution to the situation at the moment.'

Sounds negative, doesn't it. But Upson goes on to say: 'I've got to leave it as it is. There's still a big opportunity for me at Arsenal and to do anything foolish now would be a waste of three years.' Which, to us, sounds pretty positive.

He makes a fair point about the lack of opportunities currently for established internationals like Luzhnyi and Vivas - but they must have known it would take time to get into the first team: certainly Manninger was warned before he came, and it wouldn't be Wenger-esque to deceive his new signings.