19 February 2023 , 22:30
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Bukayo Saka deserves the same “protection” as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
That is the verdict of Oleksandr Zinchenko after Saka took another battering at the hands of an opponent at Villa Park. Arsenal ’s England winger Saka got rough treatment, went down hurt on several occasions and has been kicked around during most games this season.
Referee Simon Hooper was quite lenient, let the game flow and only dished out three yellow cards and one of those was to Saka who lost his cool and threw the ball to the floor in frustration. Arsenal defender Zinchenko believes that referees should be on the look out when special players like Saka get kicked by opponents.
Zinchenko said: "Bukayo is an unbelievable player, all the full backs from the other teams know he’s so dangerous, so they try to provoke him, tackle him and the referees should know this.
“We can speak about Messi, Cristiano, Neymar and players like this. The referees need to protect this kind of player. Apart from Bukayo, we have other front players who are so dangerous and the referees need to be careful, they need to look after them of course.”
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Saka was left hobbling in the first half but played the full 90 minutes, with manager Mikel Arteta warning his superstar that kind of treatment will now become the norm. "He’s fine. He got kicked quite a lot today again," he explained.
"But he’s going to have to deal with that, not every week, but every three days and sometimes in training as well because it’s his game and teams are not stupid and they want to stop him. That’s why we need to protect him."
Saka's Arsenal team-mates and manager believe he needs more protection from refereesAsked if they wanted more of that protection to come from officials, he added: "We will discuss that. We will look at the images again and report that if it’s necessary."
Incredibly, Zinchenko scored his first ever Premier League goal in his 92nd appearance after seven years in England. But the ex-Manchester City defender actually apologised for his first half performance in which his error played a part in Villa’s opening goal scored by Ollie Watkins.
Zinchenko added: “To be honest, the performance in the first half wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t happy at all but in the second half I’m happy to help my team with the goal, but my priority was always three points.
“The quality is there but we can’t stop, there’s a lot of things to improve but if we work hard to improve ourselves then we are on the right way to go.”