Arne Slot defended Gabriel Martinelli after the Arsenal forward incited fury by shoving an injured Conor Bradley deep into Liverpool‘s goalless draw with the Gunners. Four minutes into stoppage time, Bradley went down on the touchline with a nasty knee injury after getting his foot stuck in the turf. But as Bradley writhed in pain, Martinelli threw the ball at the stricken defender and then attempted to push him off the pitch while he was down. The Brazilian was labelled an ‘idiot’ by Gary Neville on commentary.
Ibrahima Konate and several other Liverpool players were seething with Martinelli, with Bradley eventually stretchered off the pitch in agony while covering his face with both hands. But Reds boss Slot refused to criticise the South American winger. He told Sky Sports: “Let’s hope for the best but I fear the worst for Conor Bradley. If a player of us is on the floor, people might know by now, 99 or 100 times out of 100, there’s something wrong with the player. I think you could see this. You don’t like to see a player being moved if he might have such a big injury. I didn’t like to see my player being moved.”
And Slot added in his press conference: “I don’t know Gabriel Martinelli but he comes across as a nice guy. The problem for him, and it’s a problem in general in football, is that there is so much time-wasting in the final parts of games that sometimes you can be annoyed when you want to score a goal and you feel a player is pretending to be injured. I’m 100 per cent sure if he knew what the injury might be, he wouldn’t do that.”
Slot’s response was similar to his Arsenal counterpart Mikel Arteta who said to Sky: “He probably doesn’t know, knowing Gabi. I don’t know what happened to Conor, hopefully it is not bad. Obviously there was no intention from Gabi to do anything bad to him.” The Spaniard added to other media: “If anyone knows Gabi, he’s an incredible lovely guy. He didn’t realise what happened. I hope Conor is well, and I’ll have a word with him now.”
But an irate Neville said on commentary during the match: “You can’t push him off the pitch, you cannot do that. That is so poor. I am surprised one of the Liverpool players hasn’t gone over and had a right pop at him. I think an apology is needed.
“I’m fuming with Martinelli. I don’t know how a Liverpool player didn’t go and whack him and take the red card. Absolutely disgraceful.” He added post-match: “I hope Martinelli has gone into the Liverpool dressing room or the treatment room at full-time to apologise and say ‘I’m really sorry, I should not have done that.'”
While his colleague Roy Keane, who was also angry, added post-match: “I didn’t like it at all. I’m surprised the Liverpool players didn’t go after Martinelli a bit more. That behaviour is an absolute disgrace. He is a good boy to roll around himself! Hopefully, Martinelli will have a look at it and hopefully, he’ll apologise for it. Not good stuff that.”
Ex-Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge, sat alongside Keane acting as a pundit for Sky Sports, added: “It’s disappointing to see. There’s passion and there’s being a winner, there’s wanting to help your team-mates, but you’ve got to be respectful as a footballer.
“Injuries are never a nice feeling. Martinelli is thinking time wasting but you’ve got to be self aware enough to see the guy is down. You’ve been there before. It’s disrespectful. It’s probably worse than disrespectful.”
And Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai reacted: “I saw that Conor twisted his knee, I don’t know what is going on with him. Obviously he didn’t want to come back to the pitch to time waste.
“He was just in so much pain he couldn’t even think where he was rolling. And then you come there to push him off the pitch… I understand you want to win, we want to win too, but I think the health of a player is much more important than something else.”