Arsenal's Nicklas Bendtner has said that George Boateng's challenge on Bacary Sagna, which earned the Hull midfielder a second yellow card yesterday, came as a direct result of him squaring up to the Hull captain after being poked in the eye.

"I said to him: 'If you want something, you've got to be fair'," said the Arsenal striker, who scored in the 90th minute to give Arsenal a 2-1 win at the KC Stadium. "You don't poke someone in the eye on the pitch when the ref isn't looking.

"For me, that's not fair. I said that to him and he got a bit upset. He took it out on Bac [Sagna] and rightly got a red card and from then on the game settled down.

"Most of the challenges were fair, except that one. It was a poor challenge. You can see Bac's knee and it's got stud marks all along it so the referee had no choice. It could have been another serious injury but, luckily, nothing happened."