Raheem Sterling: Arsene Wenger should apologise to winger - Alan Shearer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41878157

Arsene Wenger was "totally wrong" to accuse Raheem Sterling of diving and the Arsenal manager should apologise, says Alan Shearer.

Wenger felt winger Sterling dived for the penalty that put Manchester City 2-0 up in Sunday's 3-1 win over Arsenal.

"I believe it was no penalty," Wenger told BBC Sport. "We know that Sterling dives well, he does that very well."

Shearer said on Match of the Day 2: "There is no way that was a dive and it was a penalty."

The ex-England captain added: "It's one thing for Wenger to deflect from his team's inadequacies, it's another to question someone's integrity and be wrong.

"I think he owes Sterling an apology."

City's win - their ninth successive league victory, a club record for a single season - saw Arsenal slip to sixth in the Premier League table, 12 points behind the leaders.

Wenger was also "upset" by City's third goal, when both Gabriel Jesus and David Silva could have been flagged for offside.

The Frenchman claimed the standard of refereeing is getting worse every year.

"I feel the referees don't work enough. The level drops every season at the moment and, overall, it's unacceptable," he said.

"The third goal was offside. I am very upset because at 2-1 we were in the game.

"The third goal was the killer and it is by coincidence that mistakes always go for the home team, as we know. You can accept it if City win in a normal way, but this is unacceptable."

Manager Pep Guardiola declined to discuss the decisions that went for his side.

"We won in the best way," the Spaniard said. "Sometimes it's like this.

"I was told it was offside and I don't want to win like this, but earlier this season Arsenal beat Burnley with a handball in the 96th minute."

Ex-Gunners striker Ian Wright, also appearing on Match of the Day 2, agreed with Shearer's view on City's penalty.

He said: "It was a penalty, the defending was poor. It was clumsy and clunky from Nacho Monreal and he catches a leg. You can see it clearly. It's harsh for Wenger to say that, it's not good."

Watched the highlights again and it was a penalty. Nacho was clumsy and he clipped his foot, he is a top defender and should know better. Also, it doesn't help when Wenger continually deflects his teams performances and blames others. The players need to take ownership of their performance. They had chances in the game but didn't put them away. It was also HIS fault for benching his number 1 CF, not Sterling or the referees.

 

No problem with Wenger on this, if he provides
a list of PL players that do/did "dive well" (are
any of his past/present players on it ?? ) .

 

Wenger is a joke.
He always finds something to whine about when we lose.
If he picked the right players and acquired some tactical know how then he might not have to keep finding excuses all the time.
But then some things will never change.

 

Hmm I dunno.. Mourinho is far worse with this IMO.

 

They're all bad. It's human nature with competitive people. Anyway, these things always balance themselves out. According to my only Citeh mate, we won the semi-final with a dodgy one....

 

That includes Fergie too. Great when they win, but when they lose or see a threat, they can really get their whinge on.

 

Shearer needs a big dose of get the **** over it

 

I don't recall Pochettino piling into refs or the antics
of opposition players post-match as Spurs manager
(though I do see mental pauses + some lip-biting at times) .

On officials, I would rather clubs be polite in public
post-match and then tell the FA etc in writing why
their officials have been sh*te for that particular match.

 

Wenger's teams have produced some of the best football that the PL has ever seen, but he is the most graceless twat ever to manage a PL club.

 

There are plenty of runners in that field.... SAF, Pedro the Fisherman, Hughes, Pardew, Pulis.....

 

I'll let SAF off because of his politics and he was clever with his mind games. Pulis gives credit where it is due as does Pards, Hughes is a **** but Arsene Whinger is by far the worst, I have never heard him give credit to the oppo ever.

 

He even gave credit to City during that interview where he had a moan about the ref.

 

It's a close toss up between Wenger and Maureen as the worst sore losers. The difference is Maureen will castigate his players when he has to, Wenger will blame everyone except his players, when sometimes his players have clearly let him down.

 

The difference is the Maureen will castigate his players in public, Wenger does it behind closed doors.

 

Ex-players have come out and said he rarely does that. He also doesn't drop a poor performing player when he should do. God knows if it's down to blind loyalty, his rigidness or his fear of upsetting a player, but this is something that most managers do but he doesn't. How many times have we seen the same player play and carry on looking sh1t, but he refuses to bench him for another? I can bring up two players that he bizarrely never played over players that didn't do much - Perez and Campbell.

 

We can only hear what we listen to

 

im a big believer that you have to focus on your own team and forget decisions that go for / against you.

If you play out of your socks, and then lose 1-0 to some terrible call, then maybe you can bring that up and chalk it off as a one-off.

However, it usually happens that we have decisions that go against us in games where the opposition is clearly better than us, or we were clearly not up for it.

You're always going to have bad decisions in football; its up to you to make your own luck and ultimately win the game despite those decisions. Great teams do that. Champions do that. Arsenal dont.

 

Wenger is a **** manager. Water is wet.

 

This is what bothers me about Wenger the most, his deflection from the fact our team plays ****. He will blindly refuse to acknowledge the players mistakes or general ****iness. I don't want him to publicly flog his players, but don't start talking about other players, managers or referees.

The fact he publicly called Sterling a serial cheater is shameful and unbecoming of an experienced and mature footballing manager.

 

I`m surprised Whinger saw it, he saw nothing last Saturday. Whinger acts like a child, when decisions go against his team he blames everybody else and never sees anything when his team benefit from wrong decisions, he could almost be part Scouse.