I know it didn’t matter in the great scheme of things, but it was embarrassing for Arsenal’s previously unbeaten reserve side to lose at the home of the Bundesliga’s rock bottom side, Cologne. We had all the possession, but without any end product bar hitting the post it took a usual dodgy penalty decision against us to give Cologne a chance to go through to the next stage after all, despite losing their first 3 games in the Group.
Wenger was adamant that there was no way the penalty should have been given. He said after the game: “We had a lot of possession. We lost the game to one shot, basically. It was a very nice penalty that we have to take on board. It was honestly not a penalty at all. We missed a little bit of the accuracy in our passing in the final third that is required to score more goals. We had plenty of dangerous situations but we always missed a little something to finish our chances. I must also say that Cologne defended with spirit, with commitment and overall the crowd was absolutely fantastic for them.
“I must say that the attitude was good. It took us some time to inject some pace into the game. In the second half, it was much quicker. The pitch was a little handicapped tonight, and the players were because of it, but I cannot fault the preparation or the concentration of the players.”
Wenger seems very sure that it wasn’t a penalty, and Rob Holding, who was right on the spot, seems to agree with him. The defender said: “I was on the right hand-side, so I just saw Per and Debuchy squeeze him out, push him away from the ball and trip over him. I’ll have a look at it and see if it was the right decision, but first thoughts I didn’t think it was.
“I haven’t really spoken to him [Debuchy] about it, I spoke to Per about it and he said he pulled out of [the challenge] because he knew what he [Guirassy] was going to do.”
But Jack Wilshere is not so sure. In fact he thinks the ref was right! Jack said: “To be honest with you I was a long way away from it.
“You can see why the ref gave it, it happened so quick.
“There are two players coming in to sandwich him and if he feels a touch he’s got every right to go down. We can’t blame the ref for that.”
So, was it penalty or was the ref harsh in awarding it? Whatever you think of the decision we have to admit that Sehrou Guirassy put it away extremely well, giving Ospina no chance whatsoever, but then again we never save any penalties given against us!
Well at least Danny Welbeck got some game time at last, but neither him nor Giroud or Wilshere (nor Iwobi in the second half) could find a way through. In fact our best two chances fell to Francis Coquelin, who has still never scored for Arsenal. Reiss Nelson played extremely well when he came on and showed his class. I would have liked to have seen Nketiah come on at the end as well personally. In fact it was a bit like a training game, but it is annoying that they couldn’t win the Group in style….
Admin
It was a fair decision
complains are coming ?
again we dominate but fail to create any clear chances and or score…
if there is a league of domination…we will win for sure
come on, it was clear Penalty… Let’s be fair, we all know it is, He already dribbled past Debuchy bfr Deb n Per rushed to close him like what I don’t know.
We lost, fine. We’ve qualified, let’s start preparing for Burnley and someone please Tell Wenger to stop whining about the penalty for Pete’s sake!
Giroux was rubbish..
It only looked that way to the untrained eye, if you look at the stats I’m sure you might find something in there somewhere.
As much as I love the fact that we are building the emirates into a real fortress,our away form really worries me . At home we in a title winning form but away it is more of relegation material. And these stupid penalty decisions have a lot to do with it. First watford,then city and now koln. Back on the topic however,I think it was a bit harsh to give it against debuchy who otherwise had a pretty descent game. It would not have been a penalty in the epl 85% of the times. But as they say it,if you are in a bad run,everything goes against you. We seriously need to improve our away form as we can only maybe finish in the top 4 rather than win titles even with a 100% home form all season….
in all honesty against a team like Koln, a bad penalty decision or not should not make the difference. Even the team we fielded should have been capable to score a few goals.
Who cares at this point? We can sit here and moan about it but what’s done is done. We lost the game which we should’ve won, even with the players that were on the pitch. Frankly, I’m not as disappointed in the result because we still ended up topping the group, but I am majorly disappointed in some of our guys. It’s clear that our second stringers are nowhere near ready for action. On paper it looks like we have decent depth, but in reality players like Wilshere, Elneny, etc. have no business in playing for Arsenal.
Seriously, I think the ref was afraid that the fans would riot. I heard they blasted (I predict a riot) into his hotel room the night before.