All Premiership clubs have to name their playing squad for the rest of the season at the end of the January transfer window, and Arsenal have released their list today. On the goalkeeping side, Wojciech Szczesny, Lukasz Fabianski and even Vito Mannone are included but Wenger hasn't even bothered putting Manuel Almunia on the list [.

Thankfully the matches this festive period are all within a day of each other, as it may quell the potential agony. Look at this run:

H Manchester United Wed 21 A Chelsea Mon 26 A Norwich City Sat 31 H Arsenal Mon 02

Yikes. Yet the only solace I can find is that at least the fixtures aren't reversed.

It's the greedy bastards vs. the cash-strapped, plucky underdogs!... except it really isn't, since Arsenal are a multi-million dollar organization.
Whatever, City still sucks.

Manchester City
League Form: 1st, 12-2-1 (yay!), 49 GF, 15 GA, +34 GD, 38pts
Home Form: 10P, 10W, 24 GF, 4 GA, +20GD
Last Meeting: Arsenal 0-1 Manchester City (November 29)

Ah.

Basel faulty Hot on the heels of but not quite as severe as Vito Mannone's howler, Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea got in on the act with his own bout of memory loss. De Gea also forgot that as a goalkeeper he is entitled to catch, punch or stroke the ball when [...]

A horror show from Arsenal goalkeepers Vito Mannone and Łukasz Fabiański condemned Arsenal to a 3-1 defeat to Olympiakos and proved once again that Arsene Wenger must sort out the team's goalkeeping problems. Unbelievably bad, pitiful and far from reliable. How else can one describe the current crop of Arsenal goalkeepers currently vying for Wojciech [.

A horror show from Arsenal goalkeepers Vito Mannone and Łukasz Fabiański condemned Arsenal to a 3-1 defeat to Olympiakos and proved once again that Arsene Wenger must sort out the team's goalkeeping problems. Unbelievably bad, pitiful and far from reliable. How else can one describe the current crop of Arsenal goalkeepers currently vying for Wojciech [.

That being the fact that you're allowed to handle the ball inside the penalty area. Rather than catch David Fuster's time effort for Olympiakos last night, Arsenal's sub keeper Mannone on in place of the injured Lukasz Fabianski decided to attempt some sort of martial arts volleyed clearance. That plan didn't really work.

Yossi opens his accounts for Arsenal

This was Arsenal's first defeat in this season's Champions League and it had we not qualified prior, it would be shambolic rather than comical. Olympiacos must have thought we'd done them a favour but they could rightly be disappointed to miss out on the next stage.

Match report Video (via @arsenalist)

Sometimes, like against Manchester City in the Carling Cup, we see a performance from the second string that lifts the spirits and gives us hope and encouragement for the future. And sometimes we get performances like last night which reflect little more than why these players are part of the second string.

Vito Mannone who replaced Fabianski in the Aresenal goal after 25 minutes probably wishes he was still on the bench after he tried to clear a David Fuster shot with his foot instead of just catching it, a mistake which gives Olympiakos a 2-0 half-time lead in Greece.

Just when it was starting to look like Arsenal had managed to sort out there goalkeeping problems with Wojciech Szczesny looking good as Number One, and Lukas Fabianski and Vito Mannone as backups in case of injury, it seems that neither of the understudies are happy with their position. Fabianski has now said several times [.

The likely starters

It's football day once again. Not something you would usually expect so soon, since Arsenal only last played on Sunday. Seemed to remember reading somewhere that the FA asked if we are comfortable with the schedule and we didn't say no. So, no point pondering over that now.

Ivan Gazidis spoke on a variety of issues at a meeting of sports business leaders in London earlier this week and he made some interesting comments about the Arsenal Way.

First Gazidis said:

"We as a Club are operating in a self-sustaining way and are concerned about value.

Ivan Gazidis spoke on a variety of issues at a meeting of sports business leaders in London earlier this week and he made some interesting comments about the Arsenal Way.

First Gazidis said:

"We as a Club are operating in a self-sustaining way and are concerned about value.

Well I guess your esteemed bloggers should all get the slacker of the week award this time, since none of us were able to watch today's friendly. Actually, JG may have watched, but he's currently unable to really blog or comment while he's visiting in Peru for about three weeks. Hopefully he'll be back and blogging in less than two weeks.

The young Pole Wojciech Szczesny is raring to go in the new season, and wants to be the Number One at Arsenal for many years to come. He played the first half in yesterday's win over Malaysia and Vito Mannone replaced him but he doesn't intend to give anyone the chance to take his place [...]

Arsenal played a team of Malaysia's best today on their pre-season tour in SE Asia, and predictably won in convincing fashion, 4-0.

The match was streamed for free on arsenal.com, so look at the schedule for coming games. Our next match is this Saturday in China.

I didn't catch the first half, so instead of a match report and player rating I'm going to go over our four goals and some other chances we had.

The January 2011 transfer window is closed and it was a record breaking one as Premier League teams spent over £210 MILLION on transfers in January. Here is the final list of player transfers.

Updated: Feb 1

Arsenal
Incoming:
Ryo Miyaichi (undisc.

Morning all,

hope you're well this Tuesday. It's a bit quiet really, the post-weekend stuff has calmed down and there's still not a great deal being said about tomorrow night's game against Ipswich. As rumoured they've appointed Paul Jewell as manager to replace Roy Keane. Jewell, of course, was in charge of Wigan when they beat us in the Carling Cup semi-final a few years back before they went on to get hammered in the final by United.