Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has apologised for his touchline antics during the closing stages of his team’s dramatic 2-1 win over Burnley on Sunday.
The Frenchman lost his cool when referee Jon Moss awarded Burnley a penalty in the 93rd minute who were trailing 1-0. A furious protest from the Gunners boss saw him getting banished from the touchline and was ordered to watch the remainder of the game in the dressing room. However, Wenger was still fuming and made the matters worse for him by pushing fourth official Anthony Taylor. The Arsenal boss has now apologised for his behaviour.
Speaking after the match, he said: “I regret everything and I apologise for that.”
“I was sent to the stands but I thought I could watch it from the corridor. I was sent-off for something that you hear every day in football. It was nothing bad and nine times out of ten you are not sent to the stands for that.
“I was actually more calm than I usually am throughout the game until the last few minutes. I should have just shut up, gone inside and gone home,” he added.
Well, the late penalty did not prove costly for the Gunners as Alexis Sanchez scored the winner from the spot in the 98th minute.
Meanwhile, Wenger had urged Granit Xhaka to ‘curb his game and not punish the team’ after the Swiss international was shown a straight red card for a poor lunge on Steven Defour.
Wenger said: “I have to look at the Xhaka challenge again but the noises I get is that it was a red card.
“He has to learn to curb his game and not punish the team with a lack of control in his tackling. We don’t encourage our midfielders to go to the ground with tackles. We want them to stand up and not make this kind of faults. If it is a bad tackle it’s a red card.
“We have now suffered two red cards and four penalties at home this season so you can’t say we make things easy for ourselves. But in the end, we still got an unlikely win because when you are ten men against 11 with two minutes to go you need a team who keeps going no matter what happens,” he added.