'Sparky' says

"I went to shake his hand but instead he asked me if I had played for Barcelona. I said 'yes I had - a long time ago'."

"Then he said something along the lines of 'well, that wasn't Barcelona type of football'."

Seems that the football world, and Hughes in particular, was outraged by this "lack of respect" from Fabgregas.

But everything's alright now that Cesc has apologised, and the apology accepted.

Apparently the Arsenal man has said,

"I should not have done it but I get really upset when we don't win and I don't play well. Luckily, he accepted my apology and I must learn not to do anything like it again."

"But I just felt that they came for a draw and did not care how they did it."

Yes Cesc, we understand. Everyone understands. And most people will think your comments to Hughes a bit cheeky, but funny. Far from the kind of thing that warrants an apology. If you feel bad about it then sorry yourself hoarse if you like, we just hope you realise that for every upset Mark Hughes fan who ththought ehat you said outrageous, there are loads of fans of Arsenal and of attractive football who'll be thinking "good for you, son".

We've all been there, us Arsenal fans. Winning (or drawing) ugly, doing what needed to be done to beat a more talented side, these are the things we did and were proud of under George Graham, a style which won us a good few trophies. But I don't think many of us were blind enough not to see it for what it was. I think our response at the time, to such a jibe, would have been, "Yeah, you got us there. It ain't pretty but we just got the better of you and we don't care what you think of how we did it."

This trend for asking for apologies for such stuff is a bit sad really. The game needs characters and they need to be allowed to have a laugh now and then. Cesc's joke, like the way Thierry Henry taunted Chris Kirkland over his time-wasting during our comeback win 8 days ago (also the subject of calls for apologies), should be causing nothing but chuckles.

Be honest, Sparky. We take the piss out of the way you played because we can, because it makes us chuckle. And you'd do it too.

So why get so upset? Is it because you know Cesc's right and you're embarassed that a player who stood for the antithesis to your side's approach on Saturday should be turning out a team of such small ambition? Be proud. It worked. You wanted to take the game back to Ewood Park and that's where it's going. I can't see why that's what you wanted, though. Lots of lesser teams like yours have come and scored first at Ashburton Grove. It's hardly a fortress, yet. If you're that good at defending, why not accept the free gift Arsenal seem to give everyone? By staying back so much you didn't even give us a chance to let you have a start.

Rovers skipper Ryan Nelsen has been putting his oar in, in predictable fashion.

"I think it was probably a bit of sour grapes because now they know the game at Ewood Park is going to be extremely difficult. The result gives us a huge amount of satisfaction because Arsenal score a lot of goals and I don't think a British team has kept them at bay yet at the Emirates. They're an extremely good side and they keep the ball well, so we knew if we opened up a bit they've got good enough players to hurt us. "

Hence their policy of not opening up at all. He's right about the British clubs thing, the only other side to come away from Ashburton Grove without conceding, so far, is CSKA Moscow who also drew nil nil in a Champs League group stage match back at the start of November. In fact Rovers did better than CSKA in defensive terms because the latter's clean sheet came about only thanks to a huge number of bad misses by the home side. On the other hand, CSKA were more keen to get out of their own half of the pitch than Rovers.