Sehrou Guirassy penalty seals win for Cologne over Arsenal understudies

There is a limit to how much genuine disappointment Arsène Wenger will carry from Cologne after a flat performance and narrow Europa League defeat for his understudies. They are qualified as group winners, despite a going-through-the-motions 90 minutes with few redeeming features, and all the while his most valued personnel stayed at home with their feet up. This game was, bizarrely, more of a silver lining than a cloud.

At the end of the previous game with Red Star Belgrade, when qualification to the next round was ticked off, Wenger was asked how seriously he would take their remaining games, as potential influencers for the teams hoping to join Arsenal in the knock-out stage. Although he rang a wholesale change to the starting XI in Cologne after that feelgood derby win against Tottenham, this was actually a pretty experienced lineup. With eight full (or former) internationals and the rest capped at under-21 level, it was far from a team of rookies.

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