Alan Shearer has blasted Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta by stating that he was ‘disrespectful’ towards Newcastle United with his touchline antics during Arsenal’s goalless draw against Eddie Howe’s side in the Premier League on Tuesday night.
The Newcastle United legend felt that Arteta was going ‘crazy’ at times on the touchline, especially towards the end when he felt that Arsenal should have been awarded numerous penalties.
The Premier League leaders had the chance to go ten points clear at the top of the table with all three points, instead, they are eight clear of second-placed Manchester City, who play Chelsea on Thursday night.
In games gone by, Arteta can be seen outside of his technical area and he was certainly dancing down the touchline during this game.
Some may view it as passion, whilst others might think he is just losing control and being over-emotional in full view of his own players.
Well, after yesterday’s game, Shearer was pretty clear in how he viewed Arteta’s actions, as he told Premier League Productions (03/01/23 at 10:05 pm).
himself or his assistant needs to have a word with him and calm him down,” said Shearer.
“I think he is disrespectful to the opposition. He’s making it very difficult for referees who have a hard enough job as it is. I get he wants to be animated on the touchline. If his players were behaving like him, then he wouldn’t like it. He needs to calm down. I get the big stakes. They are top of the league and it’s an emotional game.
“But he’s making it very, very difficult for referees because he’s being disrespectful to the opposition – when you see your manager on the touchline behaving like that. He has to calm down. He’s the one who has to make tough decisions and stay calm.
“At the minute, he’s going crazy on the touchline, it can’t be helpful, can it?”
MIKEL ARTETA ON THE TOUCHLINE
The issue Arteta has is that it’s not the first time someone has called him out for his antics out on the touchline and it probably won’t be the last.
It’s understandable if Arsenal fans were to defend their manager, and in truth, if that was a Newcastle manager doing that, then would Shearer call him out like that? Probably not.
You can’t take the emotion out of the game, but Arteta was dancing in such a way yesterday that he even managed to somehow get the usually-calm Eddie Howe a little heated towards the end of the match.
