Footballers and gloves

I thought I'd start with something easy. This has been niggling away at me since I ended up watching some of Arsenals last European match against some random Dutch team. I'm sure it was a relatively cold night in Holland but what really irked me was the number of players wearing gloves. This is not a new phenomenon but I feel it's indicative of the way footballers expect to be treated in general (I'll save that topic for another time).
The one player that really stood out for me in the aforementioned match was Andriy Arshavin - running round in a pair of sponsored gloves. FFS the guy is from Russia - I'm no expert on global weather but I'm damn sure it's colder in Russia than Holland in October. The question remains WHY GLOVES???