A defeat is a defeat, but Thursday night’s one in Cologne was less damaging than most.
We still secured top spot in our Europa League group despite falling to a second-half penalty. And although we weren’t close to our free-flowing best, there were some bright performances.
Arsene Wenger picked out a few of them after the game:
“I felt that Ainsley Maitland-Niles was very good, in the first half especially,” he said. “When we had problems to create dangerous situations, he did very well.
“Reiss Nelson came on and looked really tricky, dangerous going forward every time. The really young players did well on that front. Guys like Rob Holding were good too, but the young players did very well.
“Jack Wilshere was like everybody else - he created dangerous situations and was close to scoring. Him, Danny Welbeck and Olivier Giroud all looked dangerous but we were always missing something in the finishing.”
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
