Arsenal insist the crowd problems were not our fault – but where were our fans?

The Arsenal v Cologne game was delayed for over an hour last night as thousands of German fans arrived without tickets and the touts must have had a field day selling unused Arsenal tickets. Hundreds of police were drafted in to try and calm the situation and finally the game went ahead.

Arsene Wenger said that the players were calm but he thought after a while that the police were set to call off the game. He said: “We waited patiently in our dressing room but what was difficult was for me was I had all kind of plans to think about at some stage. I had to think if we play tomorrow at what time do we want to play, do we play next week… but they have the Bundesliga again in midweek, and we had a League Cup game midweek as well. Do we move it to Tuesday and play Thursday? It was all kind of speculations you know that we had to analyse and see how we can deal with the situation.

“But in the end at some stage I thought they would not play the game, because I can’t see the police taking any risk. We live in a society of 100 per cent security and I thought they would never take a gamble to play this game when I saw the images around the stadium. But I must say our supporters as well dealt well with the situation as well and there was no aggravation. I hope everything goes well after the game.”

Wenger went on to assure the media that it was the fault of the travelling fans. “Look, I’ve followed German football for a long time and I thought Cologne had not played in Europe for 25 years. On the first night they go out [to play], they spoil their night. I couldn’t understand that.

“Were the problems created by people who had no tickets? I don’t know. But certainly they had more people here than tickets so that was certainly the cause. We left that to the police – I’m not better informed than you. I just had to speculate on if the game was not played, what would we do.”

Wenger then said he was sure that UEFA would launch an inquiry, and the club were very quick to release a statement this morning pointing out that they had taken every possible precaution to stop this happening, but as I said a few days ago, it would be extremely difficult to stop the Koln fans getting in.

The Arsenal statement read: We worked in full consultation with police and UEFA officials on the night and in advance of the game and had taken extensive steps in advance to prevent tickets being sold to visiting supporters.

This included a number of measures including ensuring no tickets were sold via general sale and that no red memberships purchased after the draw were able to be used to get tickets in the home end for this match. We also worked with our colleagues at Cologne to stop supporters travelling without match tickets.

The 3,000 tickets issued to Cologne fans was in line with competition rules but it is clear many more visiting fans arrived, causing significant congestion and disturbance outside the stadium before kick-off. Many tickets were sold through touts and this is very disappointing.

We have launched a full review into the circumstances surrounding the game and will ensure any lessons that can be learned are used in the future.

One thing that certainly needs to be addressed is the fact that so many Arsenal fans did not use their tickets and were quite happy to sell them to touts or maybe even direct to Koln fans. There were probably more Germans at the game than Arsenal fans!

Where was everybody?

Admin

19 Comments

  1. Just imagine if counterfeiters
    twigged about the number
    of ticket less fans descending
    on the Emirates.
    Those who paid big money but could not get in would go ballistic
    and then we would have had ourselves a tragedy in the making.

    1. Come on tickets were going for as cheap as £16.60 (for non-season ticket holders) which at touted prices would have been easy to for the Cologne fans to get. Their first time in 25 years and they are bottom of the German league cos their fans jumped on it!

      I’ll put my hand up and say I didn’t fancy it so I didn’t turn up like thousands of other fans. The entire group stage money before local TV revenue is added is £4.8m- less than ONE CL group stage payment of £6m. But I will be at the next 2 group games if I can help it. Support the club not the regime.

  2. “COME ON ARSENAL, COME ON ARSENAL” thats not what away fans call vocal, most arsenal HOME fans wont sing and wont fight ( thank god for the later part) so only one thing left for 20’000 of us who sold our tickets for a profit and we went to Koln after hearing 20’000 ladies were left all alone 🙂

    profit taking is encouraged by management YES?

  3. One assumes there are many
    sites online trading in tickets to
    any amount of events so
    Koln fans may have bought thousands online .
    How come we did not hear about it?
    Do they trade in code?

    1. American Express who are ticket partners with Arsenal have loads of tickets for tourists which make up a considerable number of our home fans when we play at home, you can pretty much get any game tickets if your wiling to pay

  4. I’m not too concerned. Main thing is that we won and nobody was seriously injured.

    Chelsea next. I know we beat them in FA Cup but if we don’t perform well against Chelsea I honestly can’t see us finishing top 4. Liverpool beat us 4-0 and City beat them 5-0, United are on a different level, Spurs look good.

    Also, we are 0-2 away record and a loss would be 0-3. I expect it to be a tough match and I would accept a draw but we really need a win to build our confidence and make us more positive about this season.

    I think we need to start Alexis and Kolsanic for Chelsea btw

    1. i think we should go for a scoreless draw with five defenders, Kolasinac could double as a striker 🙂 or at least try for clean sheet and if we get one in its great

      1. already finished 5th, he’s still here. the only way to get rid of him to hurt kroenke finance by refusing to buy tickets and merchandise and clearly making it that its because of wenger. the leech stan only cares for money, hurt him where it hurts and see wenger getting the boot.

        1. I find it frustrating to read Wenger out stuff when the real issue would be left behind to pick the next manager, instead of a yes man to Silent Stan we would get a yes man to Ivan Gazidis.

          We need a CEO with ambition, one who will push Silent Stan towards investing in the team and push to have a manager with not only ambition but capability.

          I would like Silent Stan to be forced out but the real truth is that we generate an income by ourselves which should allow for us to compete at the very top.
          Silent Stan wants to make money and look how UTD have increased in worth, look at their income from sponsorships, even last year where we had UCL and they had EL, they had more income than us in shirt and stadium deals. they invest and get the support behind them who then spend more money and that makes them more appealing to companies that look to profit from the club outsourcing… Kit deals and such stuff.

          Gazidis is nothing more than a fluffer, he got the finances nice and hard but now we want the action, time for the juicy stuff. 8-9 years of fluffing has left us frustrated in the transfer market and blowing their load on players like Perez who isn’t financially attractive but they was eager to do something like a dog in heat but when the euphoria wears off you realise what a mistake has been made.

    1. only arsenal fans and that’s because most have died of hart attacks in the past few years, no new supporters are encouraged by our ambition and not forgetting our top players are forced to play their last year of contract at a gun point but……

  5. Where were Arsenal fans you ask, well they were in the ground when they could get in but some went back home after seeing thousands of hard core male German supporters. Don’t forget our support would have been made up of men, women and children and it would have been an intimidating scene. Some may have sold their tickets on but there are touts outside every ground and I see them every time I go to the Emirates. Touts have contacts inside football clubs and it’s a scandal.
    But thousands of Cologne fans got in without tickets so there will be an investigation into how that happened too. There were people standing everywhere, in the gangways and in the lower concourse. We will likely be in a lot of trouble wit Eufa for our negligence or lack of planning, stewarding, policing etc but no doubt that dickhead Durham on TalkSh1te will be demanding we are banned from Europe for 10 years or similar. Take a listen and let us know!

  6. If this was highbury back in the seventies the ground would have been full of vocal, working class men. The only people who can afford tickets nowadays are plastics who dont even know any Arsenal songs. The good thing is that a half empty ground means less merchandise sold and that hurts Kroenke.

  7. “If this was highbury back in the seventies the ground would have been full of vocal, working class men.” Absolutely.

    Arsenal have no real 12th man support at home. Then Arsenal “fans” want to win the EPL!

    At some point in their “hate” Wenger idiotic trum, surely Arsenal fans would recognize the importance of winning all home games to have any chance this season of even finishing in the top four?

    Titles are birthrights of the super rich, and they can quietly sit and watch. But in the EPL home games have to have 100% support for us to have a chance and that support has to be loud and genuine.

  8. “The spectacular volley was met with an equally spectacular celebration, wearing a t-shirt underneath reading ‘Nordkurve’ (which translates to North Curve) the name of the Schalke stand containing their most dedicated fans.”

    Guess who this Arsenal player is that appreciates real fans?

  9. Those who didn’t go to stadium, are probably worried that they might be treated to U-23 football since AW didn’t care about that cup.

    No surprise that ppl are not keen to see U-23 football or another ‘League Cup’ line up.

    Nothing wrong with no showing up. Democracy.

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