Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta insisted that he did not want to discuss a controversial Bukayo Saka penalty call in his side's 1-0 win over Leicester City at the King Power Stadium.
The Gunners strengthened their grip on first place in the Premier League table thanks to Gabriel Martinelli's winner, which came 50 seconds after the restart.
During the first half, the officials were unsurprisingly at the centre of two controversial moments, the first of which saw a peach of a Leandro Trossard effort disallowed for Ben White's foul on Danny Ward.
Only a couple of minutes later, Saka was seemingly hauled down by Harry Souttar inside the Leicester penalty area, but Craig Pawson did not award a spot kick, and VAR saw no reason to intervene.
Protection for Saka has been a hot topic over the past few days following weeks of rough treatment on the 21-year-old, who was targeted several times in last week's success over Aston Villa.
Arteta implored Saka to look after himself on the field earlier this week, though, and he had little to say on Souttar's challenge on the attacker in his post-game press conference.
"I don't know, I haven't seen that image," arsenal.com quotes Arteta as saying. "It's over now, I don't want to be talking about these situations too much, we are extremely happy to win these two away games against Aston Villa and Leicester and we deserved to win the games with the way we played. Now onto the next one, against Everton."
Martinelli had been dropped from the first XI against Villa, but he came off the bench to score his side's fourth in the West Midlands and was reinstated to the first XI in place of Eddie Nketiah against Leicester.
Trossard and Martinelli combined for the latter to find the bottom corner early in the second half, and Arteta was full of praise for both men, who often swapped roles throughout the contest.
"It was really important for him as well, sometimes you have to give someone a breather to come back with more enthusiasm and more energy, he contributed with a fantastic goal that gives us the win, and with his contract, delighted because we've been working for a while on that and we want to keep our best players with us, he committed to what we are doing as a club," Arteta said of Martinelli.
"We're not going to lose that on Gabi, my worry if anything is sometimes you have to slow him down because he has got too much, he's in a great place."
Elaborating on Trossard's performance, Arteta added: "He did really well. I think he was really good, I think he got involved in many situations that could have ended up in many more big chances, he was involved in the incredible goal that he scored that was disallowed, involved in the goal of Gabi, the pass that he played to him, he's so good in small spaces, tight spaces, with his creativity to open people up and I'm really happy with him.
"We had the option to play Gabi [Martinelli] as a nine and Leo on the left, we had to see how the game developed and what Leicester wanted to do. I wanted to have that option from midfield to make that change if necessary, and it was great because I think his contribution was really good."
Arsenal's win over Leicester temporarily moved them five points clear of Manchester City in first place, but that gap has now been reduced to two points courtesy of the champions' 4-1 success over Bournemouth.
The Gunners are next in action at home to Everton on Wednesday, where they will be seeking a slice of revenge on the Toffees for their 1-0 defeat to Sean Dyche's side earlier this month. body check tags ::
