Alexandre Lacazette appeared to try and gee up Arsenal centre-back Sokratis Papastathopoulos after his first-half mistake in Sunday’s north London derby against Tottenham.
The Greek defender was caught out of position when he tried to challenge Harry Kane for an aerial ball on the halfway line, leaving Spurs plenty of room to gallop into after the frontman won his flick-on.
Erik Lamela was played in and when his tame shot was parried by Bernd Leno, Christian Eriksen was on hand to tap in the rebound under no pressure – with Sokratis unable to catch back up to the Dane in time.
Gary Neville labelled Sokratis ‘terrible’ for his role in the goal, while manager Unai Emery admitted afterwards that the team had prepped for that very scenario but some players were playing with too much ‘emotion’ and ‘heart’ in the cauldron of a north London derby.
Emery made some adjustments at the break and revealed that he spoke about ‘controlling the situation’ better with regards to Kane, and Lacazette seemed keen to press the message home to Sokratis before going back out on the pitch.
Check out Lacazette and Sokratis from 10:39 below…
The Frenchman chatted to the defender in the tunnel as the rest of the team made their way out for the second half, repeatedly pointing at his head and telling Sokratis to concentrate more.
They spoke all the way out onto the pitch, with Sokratis putting his arm around Lacazette and appearing to reassure him that the message had been heard loud and clear.
Arsenal took greater control of the match in the second half, with Kane getting less joy as an out-ball and Sokratis barely putting a foot wrong, and Emery was happy with how the side adapted.
He said: ‘There were two mistakes in the first half and they scored two goals. We spoke about that in the dressing room and we learned for the second half and after we were continuing getting in their boxes, taking corners and shots.’
