Ian Wright has come clean about a message he received from an Arsenal player who wasn’t too happy with the iconic forward
Ian Wright says ex- Arsenal star Alexandre Lacazette sent him a disgruntled message after the striker-turned-pundit mocked his screaming. The French forward let out an infamous pained yell during a match against Burnley in 2021.
Wright is a Gunners legend but that doesn’t mean he’s always got on with every player at the club. The 62-year-old shed fresh light on a row he had with Lacazette five years ago.
In March 2021, Arsenal travelled to Turf Moor for a Premier League match and were being held 1-1 in the second half when defender Erik Pieters lunged in on Lacazette’s ankle. This match was played in front of a nearly empty stadium due to COVID-19 restrictions, so the striker’s loud, lengthy scream echoed around the ground.
The defender was handed a yellow card and despite the yell, Lacazette did not require any treatment. Wright and his Match of the Day colleagues poked fun at the Frenchman on the BBC and he was not best pleased.
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Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet, Wright said this month: “Remember Lacazette was at our place? He screamed. You could hear it and I kind of made a joke about it. He sent me a message in my DMs.
“It was about taking the mickey out of him screaming. I tried to be nice and it just got worse and worse. The screaming was something that I found funny. I never screamed. I wasn’t afraid of anyone.”
David O’Leary joined Wright on the show and said: “The thing that drives me mad about the modern game is the way that players roll around. It’s just unbelievable.
“I think we were up at Leeds United vs Arsenal during COVID. We’d look around, there were about 10 people in the stadium. The thing that shocked me at that time was how players rolled around screaming.”
Wright and co-stars Gary Lineker and Dion Dublin took part in a sketch mocking Lacazette’s infamous scream in 2021. They ended an episode of Match of the Day doing their best impressions of him to a ‘scream-o-meter’ after Burnley manager Sean Dyche’s post-match comments.
This was likely the barb that Lacazette took umbrage at and Wright later apologised, saying on the Wrighty’s House podcast five years ago: “The main thing here is that I got that wrong.
“It’s only the screaming at the end. The fact is that screaming has always been a problem for me with the guys. Now we can hear it and we’re talking about massive screams.
“To the point where you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong with this player!’ This week it just happened to be Lacazette and, like I say, I got that wrong.
“What I did, when you see all the s*** that comes back… and in hindsight, of course the s*** is going to come back, especially with the fact it was an Arsenal player and it’s me.”
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