Arsenal hit back as 20,000 Cologne fans ‘infiltrate’ the Emirates

Arsenal 3 Cologne 1

Arsene Wenger expressed his surprise that last night’s Europa League tie against Cologne went ahead following disturbances at the Emirates in the hours before the match.

In what the Daily Telegraph described as “dangerous and chaotic scenes”, thousands of visiting fans without tickets tried to force their way into the Emirates.

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The London Evening Standard reported that an estimated 20,000 Cologne fans had earlier paraded through the centre of London in a largely peaceful display of support for their team who are back in Europe for the first time in 25 years, but the problems began when they arrived at the Emirates.

Only 2,900 Germans had been allocated a match ticket and those who hadn’t clashed with police and stewards as they endeavoured to get into the Emirates, prompting the kick-off to be delayed for an hour as order was restored.

“I thought they would never take a gamble to play this game when I saw the images around the stadium,” said Wenger after the match.

“We waited patiently in our dressing room but we had all kinds of plans to think about: do we play tomorrow? Next week? It was all kind of speculation that we had to analyse. In the end, at some stage, I thought they would not play the game.”

The match went ahead, however, and the delay had clearly affected Arsenal more than it had their visitors. Cologne took the lead on nine minutes when Jhon Cordoba cleverly lofted David Ospina, who was making his first appearance for Arsenal since the FA Cup final in May.

The Cologne fans celebrated and in doing so revealed how many of them had managed to gain access to the sections of the Emirates normally reserved for Arsenal supporters.

Alexis Sanchez scored Arsenal’s second goal against Cologne (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

“I don’t know how they were able to infiltrate our fans but they did it very well,” said Wenger.

Arsenal could perhaps be forgiven their sluggish first 45 minutes, given that Wenger had rested the likes of Danny Welbeck, Mesut Ozil, Alexandre Lacazette, Aaron Ramsey, Laurent Koscielny and Petr Cech ahead of Sunday’s trip to Stamford Bridge, but they still required a firm talking-to at half-time.

Whatever Wenger said had the desired effect and the home side dominated in the second period. Sead Kolasinac levelled four minutes after the interval with a crisp volley and Alexis Sanchez scored his first goal of the season with a superb effort on 67 minutes.

Hector Bellerin added a third as the Gunners marked their first appearance in the Europa League since 2000 with a comfortable win.

Asked for his opinion of playing Thursday night football for the first time in nearly 20 years Wenger replied: “Once you are on the pitch, if you love football, you play. You don’t wonder what type of cup competition it is.”

As for the repercussions that may arise from the ugly scenes before kick-off, the Daily Express reports that Uefa will “demand a full report into the problems” to pinpoint who was to blame for the chaos.

The Sun has already fingered one guilty party, alleging that some Arsenal fans sold their tickets to Cologne supporters, in a few cases receiving £1,000 in exchange for a ticket with a face value of £35.