Arsenal qualify for Europa League last-32 despite defeat in Cologne

It may not have been the result Arsenal wanted, or the performance any of their B-teamers were hoping for, in a rainy noisy 1-0 defeat in Cologne. But it was just enough to give them the desired outcome: winning Group H with one game to spare.

Yes, they were reliant on a 0-0 draw between BATE Borisov and Red Star Belgrade which ultimately rendered this game immaterial. That draw in Borisov means that now no-one can catch Arsenal at the top of the group. No matter what happened here, nor whatever happens when Arsenal host BATE at the Emirates on 7 December.

Arsenal were perhaps unlucky to lose this game, which they dominated in terms of possession and chances, without quite threatening as much as they should. It took Koln taking the lead through a second-half penalty to really wake Arsene Wenger’s side up. And even then, though Reiss Nelson and Jack Wilshere forced saves from Timo Horn, there was no great siege.

Arsenal had been dominating the second half but all it took was one fast Koln break to cut them open. Yuya Osako sent Sehrou Guirassy through, and he got goal-side of Mathieu Debuchy. The veteran defender, not as sharp as he was, could only bring Guirassy down. He got up and wrong-footed David Ospina with his penalty, to the delight of the 45,300 crowd.

Koln, remember, have not won a Bundesliga game all season. They had only won once in this group stage before tonight, a 5-2 rout of BATE Borisov here at the RheinEnergieStadion on 2 November. So this was still a night of raucous celebration for them. If they win in Belgrade in two weeks’ time they can still qualify for the last-32. Which, for a fan-base so starved of European football, is nothing trivial.

The first half, it must be said, was not a classic. The FC Koln fans were exceptional, providing exactly the special atmosphere Per Mertesacker predicted in his pre-match press conference on Wednesday afternoon. For them this was a big match, hosting Arsenal after so long out of Europe. The noise belied the low stakes of the game itself.

The football, though, was unavoidable. It was clear from the start what type of game this was: a game with almost nothing riding on it, between comfortably the worst team in the Bundesliga and Arsenal’s second string. The first half was devoid of everything you look for in a football match: quality, tension, events and surprises. The closest we got to any of those things came on the half hour mark, when Ainsley Maitland-Niles rolled the ball to Francis Coquelin, breaking down the left. He took the ball in his stride, shot and it hit the near post. For first-half chances, that was that.

Beyond that there was mainly just frustration, especially for Jack Wilshere and Danny Welbeck, playing just off Olivier Giroud. Wilshere and Welbeck have both suffered horrific luck with injuries over the years but both harbour ambitions of making the England squad for the World Cup. Wilshere this year has been limited to playing Europa League and Carabao Cup games, at least from the start, despite Wenger’s enthusiastic endorsement of him for an England spot. Welbeck, meanwhile, was making his second appearance in two months.

But Welbeck struggled to get a foothold in the game and only had one notable moment, towards the end of the first half, when he curled a shot harmlessly wide of the far post. Wenger took him off at half time, not providing the best encouragement for his future prospects.

Wilshere at least grew into the game. He too had a difficult first half – he could not get enough on one Ainsley Maitland-Niles cross from the left – but in the second half he started to get on the ball more in the final third. There were nice touches and flicks, and once Arsenal had gone behind, he was the only Arsenal player to ask any real problems of the opposition. He danced through some tackles to test Timo Horn with a shot from the edge of the box and then, in added time, forced Horn to tip over a fizzer from distance.

There was plenty of Arsenal possession in the final minutes, most of it going through Wilshere. He chipped a cross just over Olivier Giroud at the far post, floated another one past everyone, and drove one to substitute Eddie Nketiah who could not quite turn it in. Reiss Nelson, also on as a sub, looked sharpest of all, skipping through tackles and stabbing a shot which Horn parried away. But it was not enough, Arsenal did not get their result. Not that they needed it in the end.

Koln (3-4-3): Horn; Sorensen, Maroh (Rausch), Mere; Klunter, Ozcan, Jojic, Horn; Cordoba (Olkowski, 70), Osako, Guirassy

Arsenal (3-4-3): Ospina; Debuchy (Nketiah, 84), Mertesacker, Holding; Chambers (Nelson, 67), Coquelin, Elneny, Maitland-Niles; Wilshere, Giroud, Welbeck (Iwobi, 45)