Brighton & Hove Albion manager Fabian H\u00fcrzeler confirmed he sent a text to Mikel Arteta after publicly criticising Arsenal\u2019s time-wasting earlier this month. The exchange was intended to explain his position while also stressing admiration for Arsenal\u2019s work this season.<\/p>\n
Arteta had been unsympathetic when the issue was first raised. \u201cYou just go back to the previous games [between Brighton and Arsenal] and you\u2019ll find a lot of comments like this always,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
H\u00fcrzeler made clear he wanted to be respectful but would not retract his concerns. \u201cI texted him and I said the same thing to him as well, that I have huge respect for everyone from Arsenal,\u201d the 33-year-old head coach told assembled media on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important to say one thing about that, and I said it in the press conference before the game, that I really admire what Arsenal have achieved so far in this season. I really admire seeing Mikel Arteta and his team, his players and all the staff, how they work, and I will be the first one who will congratulate them if they win the Premier League .\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to upset anyone from Arsenal, I didn\u2019t want to upset the staff or the players,\u201d H\u00fcrzeler insisted, \u201cbut on the other side, I will stick to my words. Some things I wasn\u2019t happy about that night, and I think all the numbers, they gave me the confirmation about what I was saying afterwards regarding time-wasting. I think we just need to find clear rules about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opta data from the match was cited as backing H\u00fcrzeler\u2019s point: Arsenal completed 71% of their passes and took 30 minutes and 51 seconds to restart play against Brighton, both team-highs for the season. The same outlet reported the Gunners took an average of 31.4 seconds over each delay and, at the time of the fixture, there had been 195 instances of a team taking longer.<\/p>\n
H\u00fcrzeler sought to remove any suggestion of bad feeling. \u201cArteta is, for me, one of the best managers in the world,\u201d he enthused, \u201cI see him as a role model.\u201d \u201cI love to see them [Arsenal] playing,\u201d H\u00fcrzeler concluded, \u201cand I also admire a lot of elements of what they are doing, and therefore I texted him and said the same thing to him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta was guarded about the private message: \u201cThat\u2019s a personal conversation,\u201d he mused. \u201cHe\u2019s made public now certain comments he made before and that says a lot of positive things about him as a person.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate that and the rest. I think he\u2019s a fantastic coach, the job he\u2019s doing at Brighton is really, really good and that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everton manager David Moyes defended Arsenal\u2019s approach when asked, saying: \u201cYou are making it sound as if that\u2019s a problem because they are good at set pieces and they are a strong, physical side. I don\u2019t see any problem with any of that. It\u2019s part of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the reason you people are talking about it is because it might be slightly different from what we have seen for a few years. It\u2019s giving you something to talk about, but I would hate to be going to football matches all the time and seeing football only played the one way. I want teams to play different styles and in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
H\u00fcrzeler texted Arteta, praised Arsenal’s season, but kept his stance on time-wasting and rules….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,773,172],"tags":[1505,1081,1162],"class_list":["post-8417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417","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=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}