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8th May 2017
11:23am BST

"I've said to the guys there early on that it looks worse than it was in the slow motion. I do feel that I won the ball. I apologised to Joe after the tackle because I could feel by the Stoke player reactions that they didn't tell it was a good one." "At the time I didn't feel there was much wrong with it. Viewing it, it looks probably a little bit worse than I felt at the time. As you said there, I did get the ball but maybe I went a little bit over the top."The reason why we highlighted that sentence in red is because most publications reporting on the apology have left that little nugget of information out of their pieces. https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/861339706382069761 How his response reads changes completely once you hear how the actual question he was being asked was phrased. Today FM have the audio of the interview and the journalist's question really led Arter down the path to undersell the horror foul.
"A yellow card for you today and con... well, some would say controversial, but you won the ball! This is the fine line between winning the ball and tackles that are not accepted, yeah?"The interviewer was careful to make sure that it wasn't him saying the yellow card was controversial with the use of the phrase, 'some would say'. Also, the addition of an inflection and the word 'yeah' at the end of a statement was artfully used in lieu of an actual question. We are by no means suggesting that this is some sort of manipulation of Arter's answer to get a desired quote. The journalist could very well believe that the tackle wasn't that awful. However, it's important to get the full picture just in case anyone got upset over Arter using the hackneyed 'I got the ball' excuse'. He was, after all, just told that he got the ball.
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