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21st December 2023
02:26pm GMT
Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher has had enough of Mikel Arteta's touchline behaviour and believes his last excuse to escape punishment was "nonsense".
The Arsenal manager has been booked three times this season for his animated nature on the touchline, and recently he criticised match officials by labelling them a "disgrace", something which would normally result in a fine or a punishment.
However, Arteta and Arsenal claimed that this lost in translation, and that it means something else in Spanish, which ultimately resulted in the manager getting away with making the comment.
Speaking on the latest episode of Stick to Football, Carragher expressed his views on the matter.
“I think it’s bubbling [the issue of manager behaviour] and I think it does need stamping down. Maybe a couple of managers, Jürgen Klopp being one, might be the ones who get the full force of it – maybe Arteta.
“The thing that fascinates me with Arteta is what I see on the touchline, it’s almost a completely different person to the person I played against. He wasn’t that emotional. We played derby games, he was one of Everton’s best players – he was a silky player – but you’d never think he was at a referee or into his own players.
“I think some of the bookings he’s got – the over celebrating, the odd thing where you think, ‘Come on, there’s no need for that’. But I do think he shouldn’t have got away with – once he’d been charged with what he said after Newcastle, and the defence was there was a translation difference between what you’d say in Spain about something was a disgrace, it means something different in Spain. That was nonsense.
“He [Mikel Arteta] was obviously shouting at the referee, and the fourth officials said he’s overstepped the mark. There’s no doubt they’re looking for Arteta because he is lively. I sometimes think he is that close to the pitch that, if I was playing, it’s like he’s going to close you down!”
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Arsenal legend Ian Wright was also on the podcast, and he doesn't think that the manager's antics have any real impact on the team or their performances.
“If you look at Arsenal in respects of how their players are playing and performing, with the way their manager is so-called over passionate and over emotional – we’re number one in the Fair Play League.
"It’s not like it’s transmitting onto the pitch and our players are out of order, like we just saw at Villa.
“I think [the Arsenal players] are getting used to how the manager is. George Graham would be livid if you’re not doing stuff. If he’s got the hump with me, he’d be like, ‘Lee! Tell Tony to tell Nigel to Ray to tell Wrighty to make some runs!’
"But I never held it against him because he’s in the game, in the passion of the game.”
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