Gabriel Martinelli sends message to Conor Bradley after 'disgraceful' Arsenal vs Liverpool incident

Gabriel Martinelli has apologised to Conor Bradley

Arsenal winger Gabriel Martinelli says he has contacted Conor Bradley to apologise after his shove on the injured Liverpool star.

With Liverpool full-back Bradley lying prone on the turf having suffered what appears to be a serious knee injury in stoppage time on Thursday night, Arsenal substitute Martinelli kicked the ball against the Northern Irishman and pushed him off the pitch.

That enraged Liverpool players who could clearly see that Bradley was seriously hurt, with Reds stars reacting angrily to Martinelli and Ibrahima Konate ending up yellow carded.

Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville hit out at Martinelli, calling the Brazilian "disgraceful", and adding: "I'm fuming with Martinelli. I don't know how Liverpool players didn't go over to absolutely whack him to be honest with you."

Neville's former United team-mate Roy Keane added: ""I didn't like it at all. It happened to me once. I was badly injured and a player stood over me. It's not good. We know football, the player is a good lad.

"Throwing the ball at him, standing over him and getting a little knee on him. He tries to force him off.

“That behaviour is an absolute disgrace. He's a good boy to roll over himself. Hopefully, Martinelli will have a look at it and hopefully, he'll apologise for it. Not good stuff that."

Martinelli took to Instagram after the goalless draw to issue an apology to Bradley, insisting he wasn't aware that he was seriously hurt.

The Gunners winger wrote: "Conor and I have messaged and I've already apologised to him. I really didn't understand he was seriously injured in heat of the moment.

"I want to say I'm deeply sorry for reacting. Sending Conor all my best again for a quick recovery."

Reds boss Arne Slot refused to be too critical of Martinelli, saying that he felt the Brazilian must have thought Bradley was wasting time.

Slot

“I don’t know Gabriel Martinelli but he comes across as a nice guy,"

“I think the problem for him is, and it’s a problem in general in football, that there is so much time-wasting and players pretending they are injured in the final parts of the game, that you can then sometimes be annoyed if you want to score a goal that you think the player is time-wasting.

“I cannot ask of Gabriel Martinelli in the 94th minute when it’s so emotional for him to understand he is playing Liverpool –

”a team when we played Leeds and a player was held but didn’t go to the floor, or played West Ham United and my players try to drag Paqueta out of a situation where he was getting a second yellow card.

“I’m 100% sure that if he knew what the injury might be that he would never do (what he did). But it doesn’t look great if he (Bradley) has the injury which we fear he might have.

“But time-wasting and diving in football has come to the situation where players think in the 94th minute that it’s happening again, because I’ve seen it happen against us so many times this season.

“I can understand Martinelli might have thought this was time-wasting and didn’t think this was Liverpool.”

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