Welbeck has conned ref, says Shearer

DANNY WELBECK came in for widespread criticism after he was deemed to have dived to win a penalty during Arsenal’s stroll into the Europa League quarter-finals. The striker — who earlier in the day had been recalled to the England squad — was branded ‘Danny Fellback’ on Twitter by Gary Lineker, while Alan Shearer and Jermaine Jenas also insisted he had gone to ground too easily. Jenas was particularly scathing, saying on BT Sport: ‘It was a bad dive. It was cheating. Dele Alli does it and we have to say it how it is. It does tarnish the performance and it was Arsene Wenger who said it was English players who are getting better at diving and tonight it was one of his players.’ Shearer tweeted of the incident: ‘For all those asking, yes a BLATANT dive from Welbeck. Ref was conned.’ Wenger claimed he did not see it, while AC Milan boss Rino Gattuso refused to condemn Welbeck, who scored for the first time since January 7, as Arsenal progressed with a 5-1 aggregate win. The Arsenal manager said: ‘Was it a penalty or not? I don’t know. The Italian players were unhappy. I will watch it again and give you my honest feeling about it. We had a nightmare week but we have recovered from it. We will focus on the quarter-final now.’ Gattuso was magnanimous in his appraisal, despite being repeatedly pushed to criticise Welbeck, whose actions left his players incensed. ‘He is a striker,’ said Gattuso. ‘He did what he does. We can’t use this as a reference for English football. ‘Even myself as a player I tried to take advantage of situations. I would like to apologise to (Nacho) Monreal. It looked like I was throwing the ball in his face but I didn’t do that. We should stop talking about this. We need to put these things behind. A team like us should never give up. In a few years time, we will look back and see the result, 3-1. That really upset me.’