Newcastle United midfielder Joey Barton has taken back his blast at Arsenal striker Gervinho after their clash on Saturday.
Despite initially calling Gervinho a cheat, Barton has now conceded that there was some contact between him and team-mate Chiek Tiote.
He does not believe it was enough to warrant a penalty, though, and claimed he would be "embarrassed" if one of Newcastle's players did the same thing.
He said: "From my point of view I've trained for six weeks, sometimes on my own, as have all the lads. We had our fans there who have grafted all week to pay to come and watch us and I just felt disappointed by Gervinho trying to win a penalty.
"There's a fine line. For me, diving and trying to con a ref is cheating. I said what I said about Gervinho prior to seeing the numerous replays. I have to take back blatantly calling him a cheat. I thought he'd fully dived, but I still think he's going in hoping to get a pen but the ref knew what he was up to.
"If one of my team-mates got in the box and went down with a bit of slight contact I'd be slightly embarrassed by it. I'm not saying I'd be calling them all the names under the sun but there'd certainly be words in our dressing room. We have a lot of honest players who have respect for their fellow professionals."
