LONDON (AP) — Mikel Arteta says managers deserve some leeway when it comes to goal celebrations.
Like when your team scores a 97th-minute winner that keeps you atop the Premier League.
The Arsenal coach will be banned from the touchline at Aston Villa on Saturday after he received his third yellow card of the season on Tuesday for his excessive celebrations following Declan Rice’s winner in a 4-3 victory at Luton.
“When you get those moments in sport, you should be able to do that, but I understand as well there are certain boundaries and you have to respect them, such as when you are in an away ground,” he said Friday at a news conference. “But if I was given the chance, I would be there jumping.”
It’s “very difficult to demand” that coaches shelve their emotions, he added.
“I don’t know how to stop (it). It was a really emotional moment. You have everybody bouncing around and you lose sense of where you are, and the space that you have to be in,” Arteta said. “It was unfortunate because now I cannot be next to my team on the touchline, but it is a decision that they have made. If you look strictly at the rules, yes we cannot do that. But the context is different and then the ‘we’ I think is very important within the context.”
Arteta questioned if “we just need a very strong rope with the bench so maybe we don’t move.”
Arsenal leads Liverpool by two points and third-place Villa by four. The Spaniard will have to watch the game from the directors’ box at Villa Park.
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