Brentford star issues apology to Arsenal's Gabriel Martinelli for 'leg breaking' tackle

Christian Norgaard apologised to Gabriel Martinelli for his horror tackle - and then tipped to survive the “magic” cauldron of Madrid. Gunners manager claimed the Brentford skipper should have been sent off for scything down Martinelli, while .

Norgaard appeared to be making little headway in his attempt to make amends with Martinelli at half-time but later revealed: “He accepted my apology and shook my hand.

"He thought the tackle was maybe harder than I did, but he was fine and (Declan) Rice as well - he said it’s part of football, you try and make these tackles to stop transitions and there was no evil intention in the challenge.

“Looking back at it, maybe it was a bit harder than I wanted it to be, but I would never set out to hurt a player intentionally. Sometimes you end up in situations like I did with at , where I got a straight red card (which was overturned), but it was never intentional.”

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Norgaard believes Arsenal will defend their three-goal advantage in the quarter-final second leg on Wednesday - but warned they would need to navigate a path through ’s mystical powers in the Bernabeu.

He said: “I think Arsenal will finish the job. I watched the first leg and they were brilliant.

“Even though the Bernabeu is a magical place, especially for the home side, but they will need more than magic to go through this time.”

Brentford remain the ’s transit lounge club - too good to go down, but not seriously threatening to reach Europe.

Norgaard admitted: “We’ve never won here and it’s a funny feeling - we’ve taken two points off and Arsenal in our last two games and we are neither dancing around to music in the dressing room nor disappointed.

“The biggest club in the came here the other night and got nothing, so to take a point when they (Arsenal) still had something to play for is a very good result.”

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