Arsenal lost 1-0 at the hands of Southampton at the weekend, and Dion Dublin has claimed that Ben White was seen to be ‘pretending to be injured’ on the sidelines in the run-up to the match-winning goal.
The Gunners failed to capitalise on Spurs failure to beat Brighton on Saturday when going down to lose to the Saints in Hampshire, and the team has come in for increased criticism in the wake of that result.
While Ben White has already been blamed for failing to close down the goalscorer by Ian Wright, Dublin believes he was feigning an injury which cost him.
“It’s a strange one,” Dublin told Premier League Productions(via HITC). “Ben White finds himself off the side of the pitch. He is pretending to be injured and then thinks ‘Oh no, I better defend’.
“Then he comes onto the pitch too late. He could have got closer to Bednarek if he stayed on the pitch and not pretended to be injured.
“He would have been okay and they wouldn’t have conceded. Put it this way, he would have gone to bed thinking ‘I could have got a bit closer and I am not going that again’.”
It is frustrating analysing the defeat, and while it is easy to blame White for the defeat, our failings at the other end are what ultimately cost us. You could argue that the opening goal was always going to have a huge bearing on the result, and who knows how things would have gone if we hadn’t conceded when we did, but we have very little time to get over our failings ahead of Wednesday’s big game with Chelsea.
Hopefully White and all the players are ready for the challenge ahead, and that these silly mistakes can disappear so we can finish the season with a flourish with so much at stake.
Will White have been looking at himself for his mistake at the weekend? Do you think he would have been pretending to be injured?
Patrick