Slot Talk: “It Doesn’t Look Great”
Liverpool FC head coach Arne Slot gave his outlook on Conor Bradley’s injury in his post-game comments. The right-back went down in stoppage-time of the 0-0 draw and could not continue, after trying to control the ball on the touchline. It looked like his boot got caught in the turf and Bradley twisted his knee. He fell to the surface and immediately clutched his knee. Arsenal winger Gabriel Martinelli then attempted to shove the Northern Ireland international off the pitch, sparking off a melee, before Bradley had to be carted off with his head in his hands on a stretcher.
Slot gave his opinion on the Martinelli incident, before sharing his assessment on Bradley’s injury:
“I got the same question just a second ago. I don’t know Gabriel Martinelli but he comes across as a nice guy. I think the problem for him is – and that’s the problem in general in football – is that there is so much time-wasting and players pretending they are injured in the final parts of the game or during the game that you can then sometimes be annoyed if you want to score a goal that you think that player is time-wasting.“
“I cannot ask from Gabriel Martinelli in the 94th minute when it’s so emotional for him to understand that he plays Liverpool and that is a team when they are being held, held, held against Leeds United we don’t even go to the floor, if we play West Ham United and [Lucas] Paqueta tries everything to get a second yellow card and my players try to drag him out. You cannot expect from Martinelli that he thinks so clear in the 94th minute. I am 100 per cent sure if he knew what the injury might be that he we would never do that.”
“But it doesn’t look great if he has the injury which we fear he might have, of course. But football, time-wasting, diving has come to the situation that players think in the 94th minute that probably that is happening again. Because I have seen it happening against us so many times this season that I can understand that Martinelli might have thought that this was time-wasting as well and he couldn’t have thought, ‘This is Liverpool, they don’t do this.‘”
“I don’t know yet but it didn’t look great if you have to go off on a stretcher. When we see the video, we both think probably the same but we have to wait on the scans if it’s that bad. Or maybe he can play on Monday – let’s hope so.“
Teammate Dominik Szoboszlai, who was the first on the scene to rush to Bradley and help, also gave this take on the incident as well:
“I saw Conor twisted his knee. I don’t know what is going on. He didn’t want to come back to the pitch for time-wasting or something; it was just he was in so much pain he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t even think where he rolled and then you come to push him off the pitch. I understand you want to win, we want to win but the health of the player is so much more important than something else.”
Martinelli has issued a statement on his Instagram, apologising for his actions.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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