Arsenal confident of avoiding more fan trouble during Red Star Belgrade visit

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James Olley30 October 2017

Arsenal are confident they will avoid a repeat of the Cologne debacle when Europa League football returns to Emirates Stadium this Thursday.

Red Star Belgrade visit north London in the Gunners’ first European home game since at least 15,000 Cologne fans gained entry to home sections of the ground after massive congestion problems forced the kick-off to be delayed by an hour on September 14.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger admitted his surprise that the game was allowed to go ahead given attempts to limit Cologne to their allocation of 3,000 tickets had failed with segregation unenforceable.

Uefa are still investigating the circumstances around the game with Cologne fans travelling in unprecedented numbers and securing tickets through touts exploiting Arsenal’s membership scheme.

Cologne were charged by Uefa with four disciplinary counts including crowd disturbances and acts of damage but Arsenal’s only indiscretion was blocking stairways in the away supporters section – an Ethics and Disciplinary Inspector was appointed and their findings are expected to be made public imminently, perhaps even later today.

The club have also held an internal review of their ticketing methods – including possible revisions of their ‘Friends and Family’ scheme, which enables a single member to buy multiple tickets for certain matches – but Standard Sport understands they do not consider Red Star’s visit to pose any significant issues.

Arsenal have adopted a zero tolerance policy on ticketing issues and have either banned or cancelled around 1,000 memberships each year which have been linked to ticket touting. It is also understood that four arrests were made at Saturday’s Premier League win over Swansea.

Gunners chief executive Ivan Gazidis said at last Thursday’s Annual General Meeting: “We did have controls in place from preventing Cologne fans from obtaining tickets outside of their own designated fan areas but it became clear that there were many touts in operation and a number of them registered on our membership system, purchased tickets and sold them online.

“It is extremely difficult to identify individuals involved but we are working hard to do this. So far we have cancelled a significant number of memberships and expect there will be many more cancelled as we continue to investigate the transactional data.”

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