Arsene Wenger vows to give Arsenal's Danny Welbeck 'honest feeling' over 'dive' for penalty v AC Milan
Friday 16 March 2018 12:01, UK
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger refused to criticise Danny Welbeck after he was widely accused of diving to win a penalty in the Gunners' Europa League win over AC Milan on Thursday night.
Leading 2-0 from last week's first leg in Italy, the Gunners were shaken by Hakan Calhanoglu's long-range goal in the 35th minute but hit back to win 3-1 on the night and assure themselves of a spot in the quarter-finals with a comfortable 5-1 aggregate success.
Welbeck levelled by winning and converting a dubious penalty after going down under minimal contact from Ricardo Rodriguez, infuriating Milan's players.
The 27-year-old was accused of a "blatant dive" by Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker and, almost three-quarters of respondents to a poll sent out from the official Arsenal Twitter account said they would not have awarded the penalty.
Wenger, however, did not follow suit and said he would want to see the incident more clearly before making a decision over whether the former Manchester United man dived.
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"I haven't seen it again," he said. "Do you want to accuse English players of being divers?
"There's two things: was it a penalty or not? I don't know. The Italian players were unhappy with it. I can understand that, because I don't really know what it was.
"After that, Danny took the penalty in a convincing way, and I will watch it again and give my honest feeling about it.
"I will give him my honest feeling about it as well (if I view it as a dive), don't worry."
Arsenal's progression into the last eight was assured when Granit Xhaka's tame effort somehow beat Gianluigi Donnarumma in the Milan goal, with Welbeck adding a late third.
Milan boss Gennaro Gattuso said: "(Welbeck's) a striker, he has to do what he does.
"We can't use that as a reference for English football. There's a great deal of fair play in England.
"When I was a player, I'd try to take advantage of individual situations, but I'm not going to judge these things.
"I don't want to talk about the referee (Jonas Eriksson). I don't want any alibi. In the same way Donnarumma made a mistake, as you can, a referee can make a mistake as well."
