Santos rebuked over shirt swap

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has let Andre Santos know that swapping shirts with Robin van Persie midway through Saturday’s defeat to Manchester United was unacceptable.

The Brazilian left-back was a team-mate of van Persie’ s until the striker’s acrimonious departure to Old Trafford during the summer.

Santos endured a torrid time against United and also came under scrutiny for exchanging shirts with the Netherlands international at half time of a game in which Arsenal slumped to a 2-1 defeat.

It has been suggested that Santos could be dropped from tonight’s Champions League tie at Schalke as a result but, while angry, Wenger was keen to downplay the incident.

“I spoke about that but I don’t want to make too much of a big story of that,” the Arsenal boss said.

“I believe that was not the right thing to do at all, but that is not an explanation for our bad performance on Saturday.”