Ian Wright has defended Arsenal for continuing to play the ball after Danny Rose had kicked it out because Ozan Tufan was injured.
Alexandre Lacazette instead threw the ball back in and Arsenal kept on playing before scoring the only goal of the game from that build up.
The incident has been the subject of intense debate and Wright believes the Gunners didn’t have to stop playing because, in the end, the player was fine.
The club legend told Premier League Productions: “There’s nothing wrong with him in the end, there’s nothing wrong with him.
“I am sorry, plus people will say it’s Arsenal so I am biased. If there’s something wrong with you, then stay down and then you go through what you normally do.”
He added: “I don’t believe that they should give the ball back because there is nothing wrong with the player.”
This incident will always be controversial but there are rules to the game and the referee is in the game for a reason.
If he believes the Gunners did nothing wrong, then that is correct and everyone needs to learn to accept his verdict.
It would be interesting to see how the Gunners and Wright would react when we are at the receiving end of such a decision in another game.
Those who claim that Ranieri was right to be upset following that smith rowe’s goal have failed to remember the xhaka’s incident against Tottenham where the referee refused to stop play while Granite was down injured, which led to them scoring us. If Arsenal then decides to deploy such method against another side, I think there should not be any problem as it also shows another area of ours, we’ve improved on.
😀spot on👍🏽
That’s a different situation entirely – this is more like when overmars scored in a cup game after the Sheffield United kicked the ball out for an injury. (The game we chose to replay)
The difference here is I think rose kicked it out as a time wasting ploy because the player who went down wasn’t injured – but I can see why ranieri would be annoyed, I think Arteta would be had it been the other way. So would many on here
Davi, i think the truth is we ALL would be annoyed if it was the other way round.
True
Disagree – if it helped us to win a game by wasting time, I think many would see it as clever play
I’m starting to give up on the community and the admins here, but thanks for the only acceptable approach, Davi.
Can you give us a reason why yo are considering giving up?
Genuine interest, as if we know the problem we can fix it….
While I certainly appreciate the interest and the intention, I think there is a significant difference in values that is quite difficult to overcome.
Genuinely I share the belief that “difference in opinion is not a deal-breaker if people are able to discuss it politely and constructively”, however I see way too many painfully biased (towards Arteta) blogs/portals to engage in on a regular basis.
If I may quote from your previous post:
“Arsenal fans have been longing for their team to become this mean and stop being soft.
Mikel Arteta is truly transforming the team and it is great to see that the club kept faith in him until now.”
I have quarrels with both assertions. The first (on being moral, polite, elegant, sportsmanlike not being the equivalent of soft) has been discussed properly, but the recurring pro-Arteta bias is painful.
I’m not against Mikel, per se, just prefer to evaluate things fair and square. And the fact that we applaud a 1:0 home victory against a team playing so poor (and whom Liverpool trashed 0:5 on the road) shows the fast decline of expectations. We create so few chances that is unprecedented compared to Wenger and Emery, players are “deprived” of their creativity, and many celebrated the disciplined time wasting in the last few minutes when we were playing against 10 men of limited skills in front of a home audience for crying out loud. White was praised for his role in our only (and extremely controversial) goal, while he managed to lose the ball instead of passing it, but a lucky deflection allowed Smith-Rowe to score.
Yes, there were some positive aspects of the game (not too much, though), but as long as the community refuses to acknowledge the concerns and celebrate such abysmal performance, I’m afraid there is little motivation to visit this site.
That’s wrong on so many levels.
How bigoted one must be to celebrate something that was condemned when committed against us?
It could be a different matter if that happened against bloody Tottenham, but even in that case I would be proud to the boys if they returned the ball and elevated above the opponent both performance-wise and morally speaking.
We all would be annoyed if our player went down for no reason…..!
Disagree – if it helped us to win a game by wasting time, I think many would see it as clever play
I don’t see anything wrong for this, because Watford player purposely go down, and claiming that he is injury, I’m happy my team get all the 3 point at the end of the match.