Martinelli Apologises to Bradley After Late Shove Controversy in Arsenal-Liverpool Stalemate

Gabriel Martinelli has reached out to Conor Bradley via direct message to say sorry for the incident that overshadowed Arsenal's goalless encounter with Liverpool, admitting he failed to grasp how serious the injury was when it happened.

With neither side managing to find the back of the net, the Brazilian's controversial push in the closing stages became the headline story from the Emirates, drawing considerable flak in the aftermath.

Bradley's mishap came as he pursued the ball—his leg twisted awkwardly into the turf, causing his knee to buckle. The Liverpool defender required stretcher assistance and departed the ground on crutches, but not before the incident escalated.

Martinelli first dropped the ball onto Bradley, then attempted to shove him off the field to get play moving again. The move provoked an immediate reaction from Bradley's teammates, and the Arsenal winger received a caution for his troubles.

Through Instagram, Martinelli has now issued his explanation: "Conor and I have messaged and I have already apologised to him. I really didn't understand he was seriously injured in the heat of the moment. I want to say I'm deeply sorry for reacting. Sending Conor all my best again for a quick recovery."

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta had already stepped in to back his player before the apology surfaced, suggesting Martinelli was simply unaware of Bradley's plight but pledging to have a word about keeping things in check.

"He probably doesn't know [that Bradley was injured]," Arteta explained. "I don't know what happened to Conor but hopefully he is OK. But obviously there is no intention from Gabi to do anything bad to him. Knowing Gabi, if anybody knows Gabi, he's an incredible, lovely guy, and probably he didn't realise what happened. I will have a word with him now to understand that, but probably he didn't recognise what happened."

Liverpool counterpart Arne Slot also took a measured view, framing the shove as symptomatic of football's wider time-wasting epidemic rather than any malicious intent from Martinelli.

"I don't know Gabriel Martinelli but he comes across as a nice guy," Slot said. "The problem for him, and it's a problem in general in football, is that there is so much time-wasting in the final parts of games that sometimes you can be annoyed when you want to score a goal and you feel a player is pretending to be injured.

"I'm 100 per cent sure if he knew what the injury might be, he wouldn't do that. But it doesn't look great if he has the injury, which we fear he might have, of course. Football, time-wasting, diving has come to a situation that players think in the 94th minute that probably it's happening again, because I've seen it happening against us so many times this season. I can understand that Martinelli might have thought that this was time-wasting as well."