Thanks for that pontyender. Gonna be a lot of sorting out. 18k disappointed fans will not be easy to move on. I'll be surprised is the game does go ahead. I was looking forward to this one.
How and why have the German authorities allowed so many ticketless Cologne fans to travel to Arsenal plus how have so many Cologne fans been able to get access into the home areas of the stadium? Imagine if this was an English club doing likewise on the continent.
They can't stop them travelling (unless they have the equivalent of our banning order and have previous), but they shouldn't be able to buy tickets in the home end. Those that sold the tickets should lose their season tickets.
To the first question - how can you stop law abiding folk from jumping on any Ryanair flight and going from Germany to the UK, just because they don't have a ticket to a certain football match? As for the second - that's somewhat concerning.