Conor Bradley was forced from the pitch on a stretcher after a late knee twist, a sequence that has left Liverpool manager Arne Slot \u201cfearing the worst.\u201d The incident began when Arsenal\u2019s No. 11 dropped the ball onto the prone defender and then attempted to shove him off the field to restart play. That shove ignited a mass brawl which further delayed the match.<\/p>\n
Players from Liverpool reacted angrily at what was described as Martinelli\u2019s disregard for a clearly injured opponent. Bradley was later seen leaving the stadium on crutches with his left knee in a brace; there was no suggestion he had been feigning the problem.<\/p>\n
Slot was cautious on specifics but clear on the concern. \u201cWe have to wait on the scans if it\u2019s that bad,\u201d Slot acknowledged. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t look great if Conor has the injury which we fear he might have.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liverpool manager tempered criticism of the Arsenal forward. \u201cI don\u2019t know Gabriel Martinelli, but he comes across as a nice guy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m 100% sure that if he knew what the injury might be, that he would never do that,\u201d Slot insisted. \u201cI think the problem for him\u2014and it\u2019s a problem in general in football\u2014is that there is so much time-wasting and players pretending that they are injured in the final parts of the game and during the game, that you can sometimes be annoyed if you want to try to score a goal that you think the player is time-wasting.<\/p>\n
“You cannot ask Martinelli to think so clear in the 94th minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martinelli posted on social media to say he had contacted Bradley. \u201cConor and I have messaged and I have already apologised to him,\u201d Martinelli wrote on Instagram. \u201cI really didn\u2019t understand he was seriously injured in the heat of the moment. I want to say I\u2019m deeply sorry for reacting.<\/p>\n
“Sending Conor all my best again for a quick recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s manager added a character reference for his player. \u201cKnowing Gabi, if anybody knows Gabi, it\u2019s an incredibly lovely guy and probably he didn\u2019t realise what happened,\u201d the Basque boss declared. \u201cI hope that Conor is well. I will have a word with him now to understand that, but probably he didn\u2019t recognise what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broadcasters reacted strongly. Sky Sports commentator Gary Neville called the action unacceptable. \u201cI am actually fuming with Martinelli, I don\u2019t know how the Liverpool players didn\u2019t go over and absolutely whack him to be honest with you and take a red card. Absolutely disgraceful, that,\u201d he seethed. Roy Keane recalled a similar personal experience. \u201cI didn\u2019t like it,\u201d the former Manchester United captain said of the Martinelli incident. \u201cIt happened to me when I was badly injured and a player stood over me, and it\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conor Bradley may have a serious knee injury after Martinelli’s shove sparked a late brawl. Scans due<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,172],"tags":[299,1241],"class_list":["post-5880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-conor-bradley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}