“What happened does not reflect who I am or the values I stand for. Emotions run high but nothing justifies such behaviour. I’ll make sure it never happens again,” reports the Mirror.
Everton boss David Moyes addressed the incident after the game, acknowledging he appreciates seeing passion from his squad. “If nothing happened, I don’t think anyone in the stadium would have been surprised,” he told Sky Sports post-match.
“I thought the referee could have taken a bit longer to think about it. I got told that the rules of the game that if you slap your own player, you could be in trouble. But there’s another side to it: I like my players fighting each other, if someone didn’t do the right action. If you want that toughness and resilience to get a result, you want someone to act on it.
“I’m disappointed we get the sending off. But we’ve all been footballers, we get angry with our teammates. He’s apologised for the sending off, he’s praised the players and thanked them for it and apologised for what happened.”
Reflecting on Gueye’s dismissal, match-winner Dewsbury-Hall commented: “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. 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.”