The defender collapsed near the touchline late on in a dull, scoreless draw, clutching his knee. As he remained on the ground, Martinelli dropped the ball onto Bradley and then tried to pull him off the bench in an attempt to get play restarted.
Gary Neville branded the incident “absolutely disgraceful” and questioned why none of the Liverpool players reacted more forcefully.
Asked about the moment after the game, Arne Slot struck a calmer tone. He said Martinelli appeared to be a good character and suggested the situation may have been influenced by frustration over time-wasting.
“There’s so much feigning of injuries in football that players sometimes lose patience,” Slot explained. “I’m completely convinced that if he’d known how serious the injury could be, he would never have acted that way. It doesn’t reflect well if Conor has suffered the injury we fear.”
Bradley was eventually carried off on a stretcher and replaced by Joe Gomez, marking Liverpool’s only change of the match.
Mikel Arteta also defended Martinelli, insisting there was no bad intent and that the winger was unaware of how serious the injury was.
“Anyone who knows Gabi knows he’s a kind and genuine person,” Arteta said. “He probably didn’t understand what had happened. I’ll speak to him about it, but it’s likely he didn’t realise the situation at the time.”
