There is no denying that Arsenal's Premiership and Champions League hopes have been very badly damaged by the news of RVP's latest injury caused by participating in another pointless, meaningless friendly match.

Why is it that we seem to suffer more than the rest of the Premiership when our best players are away on international duty? RVP has now returned to Ashburton injured on three occasions in three years. Why? What are the Dutch coaching team doing with our most influential striker to make him break down every time he seems to pull on a orange jersey?

How it happened if frankly not important at this point. What's more important is why FAs around Europe and indeed the globe insist on putting on meaningless friendlies during a hectic domestic and European club period? Holland will only be interested in Robin's injury if it threatens his participation in the World cup. An eight to twelve week lay-off will not affect them. And they won't care if in that period, his absence causes Arsenal to surrender any hope of silverware this season.

Maybe it's time some of our best foreign stars ie, Fab, Arshavin, RVP and a few others, took a leaf out of most of the England players’ books, basically skip friendlies and stick to qualifiers and tournament play only. For example, Lampard, Gerrard, Terry, Cole's Joe and Cashley and a few others who are simply not interested in "putting on a show" to appease the money grabbers at the FA.

So now we must again head into another November/December fixture pile up with too many important players missing for comfort, as our injury hoodoo continues. We now sit on the cusp. A bad injury to Cesc or Shav and we will start to struggle for quality and craft, and the goals may well dry up. As always with me, the glass is half empty, but suddenly the trip to Sunderland looks a bit more tricky than it did 48 hours ago, not that this one was ever a gimme.

More vital though will be the visit of Chelski in a fortnight. This match could well be a must win if we fail to bring all three points home from Wearside next Saturday, and any more injuries to key players before then could make that one a very long afternoon.

We do still have Eduardo and Carlos, and I am hopeful they can fill RVP's boots until his return, but once again we must pay his wages while he sits it out due to injury caused by not playing for his employers. How can this be right in any profession? We may well get some compensation from the Dutch, but a few hundred thousand euros, or a last minute winner v Chavski? No contest is it...

And do the Dutch FA care?