Arsenal captain Kolo Toure believes Sunderland defender Paul McShane could have seriously injured Alexander Hleb during their Premier League encounter.
McShane was shown a straight red card by referee Rob Styles in the final minutes after catching the Belarus midfielder with a heavy challenge and will now serve a three-match ban.
Hleb was stretchered off in his last Premier League match at West Ham following Mark Noble's challenge which left him with a severely bruised knee.
Fortunately Hleb showed no initial ill-effects from his latest bruising encounter at Emirates Stadium which Arsenal won 3-2.
"When I saw that on the replay, I thought the intention was bad, he did not get to Hleb. The referee did well to send him off," the stand-in Arsenal captain said.
However, Toure did manage to have a quip with his team-mate following the horror tackle.
"I spoke to Alex afterwards and I said 'they want to kill you' but I was just joking! Alex is such a great player. He is okay, all right," added Toure.
The victory was the tenth in a row for Arsene Wenger's side, who are now on the club's best run of results since the unbeaten campaign three years ago.
Toure was a member of that great side which vied for domination of the English game but is wary of title-talk at this early stage of the season.
"For the minute we don't talk about it. We just focus on what we are doing well, enjoy it and make our fans happy.
"At the end we will see how far we go, the season is really long. It is really important for the team to keep on winning because the confidence is going higher and higher," the 26-year-old said.
