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Mikel Arteta says he pushed Thomas Partey as he ‘wanted him on the pitch doing whatever he could for the team’ in the build-up to Tottenham’s second goal during north London derby
- Mikel Arteta will hold talks with Thomas Partey after he walked off the pitch
- The new signing suffered an injury but left Arsenal wide open on counter attack
- Graeme Souness questioned Partey’s decision to turn his back on the game
Mikel Arteta will hold talks with Thomas Partey after the Arsenal midfielder’s costly North London derby walk off.
The Gunners summer signing, who was making his first appearance since November 8 after recovering from injury, is facing another spell on the sidelines after suffering a recurrence of the original thigh problem.
But questions were asked of Partey as he walked off the pitch after suffering the injury to leave Arsenal wide open to a devastating Tottenham counter attack that Harry Kane finished to score the host’s second.
Mikel Arteta will hold talks with Thomas Partey after the Arsenal midfielder’s costly walk off
Thomas Partey had limped off to the sidelines, leaving a lot of room for Tottenham to break
Mikel Arteta could be seen trying to push Partey back onto the pitch to take part in defending
Graeme Souness questioned Partey’s decision to turn his back on the game and walk towards the bench in the Sky Sports studios at half-time, insisting he should have stayed on the pitch.
Indeed, replays show Arteta pushing Partey back onto the pitch as Spurs broke only for it to become clear Partey was in too much pain to run.
And when asked about the incident after the game, Arteta said: ‘I was trying to push him back onto the pitch because I don’t think he realised the gravity of the situation when he left his position but that probably was because he was in a lot of pain.
‘There’s nothing we can do at the moment to resolve that. It happened so quickly, I think it was a four versus three situation for us and suddenly they were coming to us and Thomas was walking to me. I wanted him on the pitch doing whatever he could for the team in that situation.
Tottenham pulled away to a two goal lead in the first half thanks to Kane and Son Heung-min
‘I tried to push him, I haven’t spoken to him so I don’t know exactly how it happened and whether he felt something really serious. We will look at it and then we will talk about it.’
On the injury itself, Arteta confirmed: ‘It is in the same area, unfortunately. We don’t know how bad it is. He will have an MRI scan.’
Arsenal have now scored just twice in their previous seven top-flight games – one of those was a penalty.
On his team’s struggles in front of goal, Arteta added: ‘The fight and the spirit and the way they played in this stadium is to applaud but it is not enough to win football matches because we are not scoring goals.
‘We had a lot of the ball, a lot of opportunities but we didn’t have the end product. All the stats are in our favour but the game is about putting the ball in the goal.
‘How do we turn this run of results round? Score more goals. Very simple. We need to put the ball in the net, urgently.’
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