Briefly, buried in a Sunday People summary, there's mention of Arsenal wanting to buy a controlling stake of Australian club Canberra Cosmos.

Australia is recognised as a new pool of reasonably priced talent, and other British clubs have already acted to place money and scouts in top clubs down under.

Thanks to several ArseWeb readers (David and Daniel in particular) who've written in to give us the benefit of their more up-to-date knowledge of football down under. It appears that the NSL (Aussie football league) is about to be reduced from 14 to 12 teams, with the 2 least viable clubs being axed. Guess who's one of those 2 teams?

Mind you, you can see why Canberra Cosmos might be looking for some help. Finishing in the bottom 3 in every year of their existence, about to be booted out of the league for being generally rubbish. We think they'd be better off talking to ENIC!

Ok, now Chris Barber writes to tell us that from what he's read in the Melbourne MX, this stuff about the league being reduced is a bit out of date and a recent decision looks to have saved Cosmos. So maybe there's more to it than we, err..., second thought.

Make your minds up, guys. :-)