Piers Morgan has issued an apology to Mikel Arteta live on this morning’s Good Morning Britain, after he slammed the manager’s team selection.
The Gunners were in action against Leicester yesterday, and put in an impressive performance to win 3-1, overcoming an early goal also.
Morgan wasn’t impressed when seeing the initial starting XI, with all of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Bukayo Saka and Thomas Partey left on the bench.
The reality is our gruelling 90 minutes against Benfica four hours away in Greece was a fair reason for Saka to be rested, especially when you consider that the manager admitted that he was suffering with fatigue, while Partey is still working back to full fitness after his latest injury.
Morgan wasn’t interested in any reasoning however, and claimed that Arteta had ‘given up’ on the top four, and made the ‘wrong call’ on his selection.
“I want to say good morning to Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta,” Morgan said, live on ITV (via the Mirror).
“People are wondering why fans like me never get to be made managers of football teams. This is what I tweeted before kick-off yesterday: “‘Saka, Partey and Aubameyang all on the bench?
“Against Leicester?
“Wrong call, Arteta.
“This is a 6pt game – we should be putting out our best team from the start, or have we given up on Top4?’
“Well, we won 3-1 with that team. So I would like to humbly and grovellingly [sic] apologise. You were completely right with your team selection, you rest our best players, quite rightly, for the Europa and next league game.
“I take my hat off to you.
“That’s why you should really stay off Twitter, fans. Because the internet keeps receipts.”
Regardless of the result, Arteta clearly had a reason to make decisions on his line-up with regards to protecting his squad, but the result was no doubt important.
Patrick