The headline, "Arsenal were childish but not malicious", says it all really. "No one can condone what Arsenal did and the players themselves will admit privately that they were out of order. But having said all that, it wasn't a big punch-up. It was petty, childish and, quite frankly, sad rather than malicious. We have seen a lot worse than that over the years and regular occurrences in other sports. And if it had happened after a Leicester-Bolton match, you would not have heard another word about it. In that sense, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is right when he says his club are treated differently to everyone else. But that goes with the territory and the high profile.... His apology, such as it was, was a step in the right direction, though even before that, I couldn't imagine that the FA would hand out long bans to all those charged because the involvement of some of them was minimal."

It makes a nice contrast with fellow Leicesterman Alan Smith's comments, especailly the line "Arsenal fans may be incensed at the effect any bans are likely to have on their Premiership title chances. But it could be worse - they could be fans of my old club, Tottenham...".

It's particularly interesting that he makes that point about Leicester-Bolton. Did you know that there was a 15-man punch-up at the end of Bradford vs Preston a few weeks back? It was featured on Soccer AM at the time but Sky Sports appear to have forgotten about it now. It took the ref and both managers to end it, and real blows were exchanged. The result: both clubs charged with "failing to control players" but no individual players charged. No endless coverage and discussion of the incident on the telly either. Any connection?

There was a nice piece in the Mirror the other day (Oliver Holt I think) putting things into an international perspective. He was watching an Istanbul derby at the time and suggests that anyone thinking we have a problem ought to be made to go to one of those matches. It is a bit worrying that our FA appear so happy to exagerrate problems in our game, while other countries are so keen to play their problems down. It seems to work better for them doesn't it? If English fans behaved like Turkish fans, we'd been kicked out of competitions.

And as for Italy... Well, John Foot writes from Milan to say that there are 3 main points being made in the Italian press:
1) it's the end of "British fair play" (an ongoing myth over there apparently)
2) RVN is being blamed for Vieira's sending off
3) nothing of note happened at the end the end of the game. That kind of thing goes on all the time over there, what's the fuss about etc.

Of course, the FA will claim that that last point is their point: they don't want it to happen all the time so they have to be seen to act. But don't they want to be seen to be fair as well?