Ian Wright has contacted Alexandre Lacazette after making a “f***ing mistake” by joining in with the rest of the Match of the Day crew in mocking the forward after his over-exaggeration against Burnley.
Did Alexandre Lacazette make the most of having studs raked down the back of his Achilles? Yes, he did.
Is Alexandre Lacazette the first player in the history of the game to do such a thing? Of course he isn’t.
It was strange, then, why Gary Lineker and the rest of the match of the Day team, including Ian Wright and Dion Dublin, decided they would make it a closing feature of the weekend’s show to make a massive show of mocking the player’s screams.
https://twitter.com/BBCMOTD/status/1368341455241109510
This, of course, meant that the papers were filled with stories about what Lacazette did as if, as I said, he was the first player ever to do such a thing. In fact, this was the dominant narrative rather than the blatant handball that wasn’t given or Sean Dyche’s usual hypocrisy.
It’s also worth noting that after the game at the weekend, Mikel Arteta asked for a clarification around what is handball and that is yet to be given (or even covered in the media)
Now, however, Ian Wright seems to feel a bit bad about it all.
“The main thing here is that I got that wrong,” Wrighty said on his Wrighty’s House Podcast.
“It’s only the screaming at the end. The fact is that screaming has always been a problem for me with the guys.
“Now we can hear it and we’re talking about massive screams to the point where you’re thinking, “Oh my God, something’s wrong with this player!”
“This week it just happened to be Lacazette and, like I say, I got that wrong but what I did, when you see all the s*** that comes back… and in hindsight, of course the s*** is going to come back, especially with the fact it was an Arsenal player and it’s me.
“And me and Laca go back and we’ve got correspondence.
“I got in touch with him on Sunday morning so we could clear it up,” Wright continued.
“The way it was portrayed on social media, the way it was and it was Laca in that particular incident, it seemed it was digging out Laca. But we were digging out the screaming.
“My biggest mistake was the screaming at the end. F****** stupid and at the end of the day, it’s not a problem for Gary Lineker or Dion Dublin.
“But at the same time I have to accept and realise what that means to the Arsenal fanbase and what that means to me for them to feel like one of their own is supposedly digging them out.
“I can only say I was digging out the screaming. We’re talking about people that are screaming, they get up and then they play on.
“If he stayed down or if a player stays down, let’s talk about Raul Jimenez. As we speak, we don’t even know if he’s going to play again so I don’t want to make it too much of a massive thing but the screaming, for me, from anyone is not necessary.”
I love Wrighty but I can’t help think he’s splitting hairs here. It’s not possible to ‘dig out’ the screaming when it is specifically tied to a certain player and not also be ‘digging out’ the player.
And to make the comparison with Raul Jimenez, who returned to training this week?
Please…