Latest efforts involve, you guessed it, Patrick Vieira. But now it's not that he wants to leave or has had bust-ups with his team-mates, it's that he wants to play for us too much.

You'll probably have seen the headlines: Vieira angry with Gunners, Vieira blasts Arsenal Football Club, and so on. But let's look at what he actually said....

"I was very disappointed not to play with my club at the weekend. I have been back training with them for 10 days."

"I am fit to play. Arsenal wanted a confirmation about my recovery from injury and I had a scan that showed it had healed very well."

So what we have here is a pretty much run-of-the-mill story about a player who's coming back from injury and whose club is being a little more cautious about it than he would like to be. If such stories were always made so much fuss of we'd never have time to report anything else. Of course he wants to play, he's a footballer and he's been sat on his arse for ages. Sat on his arse since, in fact, a very disappointing international campaign that he'd like to get ourt of his system. And of course Arsenal will be cautious about it. They're not stupid.

If one really must try to read something into it, it's that Arsenal's midfield is incredibly strong. We can afford to leave out a player we believe to be the best in the world in his position, because the rest of the players we've got are not so far behind him. But that's not a problem and it's not that we're sending Paddy a message about not needing him. The point is: he knows how strong Arsenal are. That's why he stayed.

Arsenal will be aware that Patrick is likely to play for France on Saturday night and that may also have influenced the decision not to rush him back. Vieira's inclusion in the starting line-up against Israel is virtually ensured by the fact that he has been made captain following the international retirement of Zinedine Zidane. And together with the retirements of Desailly, Lizarazu, and Thuram, that leaves Vieira and his Arsenal mates Henry and Pires as the only remaining players from the 98 world cup who will be playing on Saturday (David Trezeguet and Fabien Barthez, who has changed his mind about retirement, are both injured).

Thierry Henry, incidentally, has been speaking about how he considered his own international future after the Portugal experience. Hard to beleieve that he seriously thought about knocking it on the head, though. He's only 27 and very much in his prime (Wenger reckons he's got room for improvement). He's got a lot of experience to bring to the squad and his rate of 27 goals in 64 internationals aint bad especially given that he started off on the wing rather than at centre forward. And his understanding with Vieira and Pires, and Wiltord if he can force his way back into the reckoning, and Clichy and Flamini if they continue to come on strong, will surely make them all key figures if France are to bounce back from the disappintments of the last 2 major tournaments.