Idrissa Gueye sends apology to Everton teammate after slapping incident

Senegal international Idrissa Gueye has issued a public statement after his red card for slapping Everton teammate Michael Keane in 1-0 Premier League win against Manchester United at Old Trafford on Monday.

Gueye and Keane began arguing in the 13th minute, with the game 0-0.Keane twice pushed Gueye away before the Senegal midfielder slapped him with an open hand.

It took the intervention of Everton and England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford to separate the pair before referee Tony Harrington showed Gueye a straight red card for violent conduct.

‘I take full responsibility for my reaction’

After the game, Gueye took to his social media accounts to apologise over the incident. He wrote: “I want to apologise first to my team-mate Michael Keane. I take full responsibility for my reaction.

“I also apologise to my team-mates, the staff, the fans and the club. What happened does not reflect who I am or the values I stand for. Emotions can run high, but nothing justifies such behaviour. I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Asked about the incident after the game, Everton manager David Moyes said: “Do you know something, I quite like when my players have a fight. I’m sort of saying I want them to be tough.

“I don’t want them to accept someone not doing well enough. Someone didn’t do the right thing. If you want a winning team, and that resilience and toughness that got us the result, you have to have players who are going to act that way.”

Dewsbury-Hall, who scored the only goal against Man United, said about the incident: “It was just a moment of madness. It was obviously avoidable.

“All I can say is Idrissa apologised to us all at half-time and said his piece. That’s all he can do and we move on from it. The reaction from the lads after it was unbelievable, top tier. We could’ve easily crumbled, gone in on ourselves and lost the game comfortably, but it probably made us grow even more as a team.”

He concluded: “The manager just said he would deal with the situation another time and it was just about keeping to the plan that we had. He just wanted us to continue what we were doing and focus on the things we can change.”

So far this season, Gueye has managed 12 Premier League matches, and scored two goals.

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