Kevin Whitcher
Ed’s note – I am currently abroad (ironically in Germany) on a training course. I managed to catch the second half of last night’s game in a bar, however, regular Gooner contributor Peter Le Beau was good enough to step in for me and cover the piece on the match. My thanks to him for the piece that follows…
Over the last few years when the possibility of not qualifying for the Champions League reared its head I had a nightmare vision of watching utterly irrelevant and very poor non- event games against second- raters while our rivals gorged on a sumptuous banquet on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. I never took Champions League group games for granted or underestimated the achievements of getting into the knock- out stages year after year. It was never our divine right but it signified our status as at least a major second-tier player in the hierarchy of European Football. We were mixing it with the big boys and while we did that there was always hope that we could break through the glass ceiling of true Champions League success. It made signing the world stars we craved a credible dream, and without those stars League success would always elude us.
My views may be controversial but five games in that nightmare has become reality. Although we qualified very comfortably as top team in our (unbelievably weak) Europa League group, the experience has become increasingly unpleasant. Yes we forged two wins away with a skeleton team and yes we beat Cologne in a game that ended seemingly around midnight when the group began, in an atmosphere that resembled something like a proper match. But the last two games against Crzena Zvevda and Cologne have been European football at its least compelling.
Playing these sort of games absolutely underlines the also-ran status that the Europa League confers. While a capacity home crowd hollered and whooped their boys home my mind went back forty six years to the last time we played competitively in Cologne. Then a controversial penalty decision had prised the Fairs Cup (which we held) away from our grasp. We had the glittering reward of a league and cup double to console us. What will this defeat portend this season?
Last night, the softest of soft penalties - Richarlison revisited - saw Cologne score in the only way they could ever hope to. It was a night when we were frustrating in the extreme. In the first half Danny Welbeck returned encouragingly to provide mobility that threatened goals, but Giroud was at his most immobile and unable to run beyond defenders. Wilshere was badly out of touch and our best moments came when Iwobi, a half- time replacement for Welbeck, Ashley Maitland-Niles, a talent playing out of position and Reiss Nelson who joined the game in place of Chambers with around a quarter of an hour to go tried to spark us into life.
Wilshere had two left foot drives well-saved by Horn but Elneny and Coquelin toiled unconvincingly in midfield as we tried to thread intricate passes through a congested central defence when it seemed far more promising to use the width and quality we had on both sides to whip crosses in to Giroud and Nketiah, who joined the fray far too late in the circumstances.
Cologne fans partied and frolicked but it all exuded a faintly pathetic air when you compared the fare on offer here with some of the performances in this year’s Champions League - and indeed some of the performances we have given in Europe in the past. It was a metaphor for what many of us believe a Kroenke- driven future offers.
If our qualification leads on to glory in the spring when we lift the Europa League, or playing in this environment accelerates the development of Nelson or Maitland-Niles some good will have come from nights like these. But games like this underline just how second-rate the Europa League is and how second rate one or two of our shadow squad are. Can we really ever believe that Ospina, Elneny and Coquelin will emerge as genuine contenders for our first team? Has the tedium of games like these doused the flame that promised to burn brightly around the rehabilitated Jack Wilshere and in the spring do we want to prejudice our chances of a top four finish that looked so credible last Saturday by stretching our first-team squad to play against the likes of Atletico Madrid, AC Milan and Napoli? Is that the best hope of Champions League football for us next year? Do we trust the judgment of a manager whose decision-making is now so erratic to make that decision in a clear-headed and pragmatic way?
Last night was ultra-depressing because it was second-rate and we still have another second-rate game to come against BATE Borisov. Perhaps it may be a night that an exciting generation of young lions come of age and restore the sort of optimism that flickered around the Grove on Saturday afternoon.
One of the worst things in life is to imagine depressing scenarios only to find that the reality of what you have contemplated is exactly what you expected. That is the Europa League for me in its pre-Christmas format. Let us hope when the real stuff starts it can be another glorious chapter for the club. But sadly that’s something I’m finding it difficult to imagine.
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