According to the report, Wenger "...told him bluntly that he should have put the ball into touch so Eboue could be treated", and Davids replied (fairly, in my view) that it was up to the ref Steve Bennett (who was right on the scene) to assess things and decide if play ought to be stopped. Wenger then, allegedly, went on to abuse Davids.

The Arsenal boss was certainly rather more wound-up than we've seen him before, although the allegations that the lack of a hand-shake between him and Jol was solely down to Wenger look less than solid to me. But the Police strongly denied that the incident took place as described.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said later on today,

"As is always the case, police are in the tunnel area at the end of every game. But no officer was involved or witnessed any altercation between Mr Wenger and Mr Davids."

Can't be clearer than that, and in light of this and the key role of the cops in the Telegraph's allegations, it's clear that one shouldn't put any faith in those allegations.

Since writing the Arseweb match report, I've seen Michael Carrick's post-match interview, in which he sounded far less clear about the morality of the goal that I was. He seemed positively sheepish in fact, sounding like he wished he hadn't played on. He said he thought at the time that Gilberto and Eboue were both ok, and suggested that he wouldn't have played on if he knew that Eboue was injured. Just one of those things.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, do we want to get to a point where players are supposed to put the ball into touch whenever they suspect that an player is injured? I don't think so.

I'm also reminded of the Villarreal game, when we Arsenal fans were howling at the likes of Freddie Ljungberg, telling him not to play the ball into touch when an opponent was rolling around (yet again) in fake agony. One can't have it both ways. Even if those that are critical of Carrick are right to be so, there's no way that the term "cheat" is deserved, and there's no way that the incident compares with the famous Arsenal games against Tottenham and Blackburn, when the ball was clearly played out by a team in order that a player could receive treatment but then not returned to them from the throw in (some would say that the Sheffield United incident provides another example, but we remember it better than that!

Best that we get over it. At the end of the day, Arsenal just didn't play well enough on Saturday to deserve a win.