Moyes slams Fabregas outburst

Everton boss David Moyes believes Cesc Fabregas should have been sent off for abusing officials at half-time in his side’s 2-1 loss at the Emirates.

Arsenal won a spiteful encounter after second-half goals from Andrey Arshavin and Laurent Koscielny overturned Louis Saha’s opener for Everton.

Replays showed Saha scored from an offside position, which raised the ire of Arsenal captain Fabregas at the interval, but Moyes labelled the language the Spaniard used to berate the referee as ‘disgusting’.

“I thought there were some really bad tackles from Arsenal in the game and Fabregas’ comments to the official in the tunnel at half-time warranted a sending off. It was disgusting,” the Scotsman said.

“I’m not going to repeat them; but they did. If he had said it on the pitch he would be have been off immediately, so what’s the difference in the tunnel?”

Moyes admitted Saha’s goal was fortunate but was more concerned at the way his team threw away victory.

“I think it was offside, it was the wrong decision. But it wasn’t Everton who made the decision,” he said.

“As for the game, we gave it away by our defending at a set piece, we have nobody else to blame but ourselves.”

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, meanwhile, hailed his side’s spirit in the wake of the result, which kept up the pressure on league leaders Manchester United, who they trail by five points.

“It was more a victory of a team with a fantastic spirit and a never-say-die attitude than our usual way,” Wenger said.

“I’m very happy because this is the aspect of the team that has been questioned the most – but it’s where recently we have been the most convincing.”

“We played our 10th game in one month and we’ve shown that even when football wise our level dropped we showed a fantastic attitude.”

On a separate note, Wenger added that he was bemused by the big spending of some of their rivals on the last day of the transfer window, particularly that of Chelsea, who spent 75 million pounds on Fernando Torres and David Luiz.

“Chelsea supported the financial fair play rules, they voted for it. Then in the morning they announce a 70-million-pound loss and then in the afternoon they spend 75 million pounds,” he said.

“Where is the logic in that? But it shows Roman Abramovich is back in the market. People were saying does he want to invest or not, but that has changed. He has decided to put big money in the game and that tells you in the summer more will come.”