I want to make a few things quite clear.

• Sending emails naming people allegedly involved in the incident is not right, it's not clever, and I'm pretty sure it's not legal. I believe action has already been taken against some people who have done so.
• If you hear a rumour and then send an email saying "Have you heard the rumour that Nasty McThug was the one that she agreed to have sex with...?" you are spreading the rumour, giving it life. The more times people see a name associated with something the more credence they will give to it, and that effect is reduced very little if you add "surely this can't be true" or something like that.
• There are 3 significant differences between gossiping in the pub and doing it online by email or forums etc. First: people take pub gossip for what it is. Many people give more credence to things read than to things heard. Second: rumours spread (and hence grow) far more rapidly online than by word of mouth. and Third: emails etc can be traced back to you.
• If the player you name is innocent, you have done them an enormous wrong by naming them in connection with the incident. If they are not innocent, then spreading the rumour will only serve to increase the probability that they will get away with it.
• If anyone is guilty of rape in this or any other incident, then we hope they are found out and successfully prosecuted.
• We have absolutely no reason to suppose that any specific club's players are involved. We've heard rumours but those are not reasons.

Having said all that, I am surprised that the media have not been exposing the very real sense in which Arsenal is responsible for the alleged incident in question. Can there be any doubt that the alleged players alleged actions were at least in part caused by the Arsenal players' behaviour after the match at Old Trafford? Not directly, of course, but the climate of moral laxity caused by those shocking scenes has to play a part. And Robert Pires' taking a tumble against Portsmouth surely helped create the illusion in these alleged players minds that they could get away with anything (in a way in which the dives of Ruud van Missedelroy, Michael Owen, and countless others did not). [note: I'm sure Robert Pires blowing a joke kiss at David O'Leary can be worked into this somehow too but I'll leave that task to the reader]. And a record 597 red cards speaks for itself. The FA need to put their foot down when it comes to the disciplinary hearings, in order to stop the country descending into anarchy.

So why aren't Arsenal being blamed? Can it be that the press have relented a bit? There does seem to be less Arsenal-bashing in the papers this week. Some articles almost portray Martin Keown as an ambassador for the sport, hard but fair and all that. Maybe they're scared that he'll repeat his shocking OT behaviour by, errr, mocking them and maybe jostling them a little, if they're not nice to them.

Or perhaps they've been surprised by their own power. A laughable This BBC website poll for example purports to show that the public overwhelmingly thinks the Arsenal players should be found guilty.

Well, we suspect that this poll was swamped by organised anti-Arsenal voting organised from Man Utd and Tottenham websites (can't blame them), if only because the Man Utd players were given a resounding "not guilty" verdict (although that may be partly because the really guilty United players weren't even charged). But there's a sense in which this vote was bound to find the Arsenal players guilty (unless rigged by Arsenal fans), because that's what the media had been telling and showing people.

So have the press had a change of heart? Or could it just be that publishing a different opinion from one day to the next sells more papers?