Mikel Arteta reveals what the referee told him about Gabriel Martinelli’s disallowed goal

Mikel Arteta revealed referee Paul Tierney told him the decision to disallow Gabriel Martinelli’s first half goal against Manchester United was ‘soft’.

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The Gunners thought they had taken the lead at Old Trafford when Martin Odegaard pickpocketed Christian Eriksen and nudged the ball towards Bukayo Saka.

The Arsenal winger played a perfect through ball, set Martinelli away and the Brazilian forward clipped the ball over David de Gea and put his side into what he thought was a 12th advantage.

United’s players immediately remonstrated with Tierney and when the official was encouraged to watch the incident involving Odegaard and Eriksen on the pitch side monitor, the outcome was inevitable.

Revealing the details of his conversation with the match official afterwards, Arteta said: ‘The referee said it was a really soft decision – we just ask for consistency, today we disallowed the goal again, there is nothing we can unfortunately now.’

Odegaard agreed with his manager’s assessment of the incident, adding: ‘In my opinion it’s never a foul.

‘I think the referee also sees it and he says play on.

<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>DRAMA AT OLD TRAFFORD! ð¨ Gabriel Martinelli’s breakaway goal ruled out by VAR for a foul in the buildup! â pic.twitter.com/1nZBkTfZOc

‘It’s a soft challenge and you know for VAR to come in it needs to be clear and obvious, they said it a lot of times and for me it is very, very soft.

‘On the camera you can always make it a little bit worse, but for me it was never a foul. The referee said play on he saw it on the pitch it’s very frustrating.’

On the disappointing of surrendering their unbeaten start to the new season, meanwhile, Arteta added: ‘We had a period of 8-10