Everton midfielder Idrissa Gana Gueye apologised to his team-mates after picking up a bizarre red card during the 10-man Toffees’ historic win away at Manchester United. Everton became the first team ever to beat United at Old Trafford in the Premier League while one man down on Monday night.

But their 13th-minute red card was an unusual one, with Gueye dismissed for slapping his own team-mate Michael Keane after a defensive mix-up. The Senegalese midfielder reacted angrily to Keane pushing him as the two exchanged angry words. Referee Tony Harrington gave Gueye a straight red and the Premier League confirmed he was given his marching orders for “a clear strike to the face of Keane”. Despite being down to 10, Everton battled to an incredible victory thanks to Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s first-half strike.

Speaking to Sky Sports post-match, the match-winning midfielder revealed that Gueye said sorry to the squad in a post-match chat. He explained: “Rollercoaster game. I’ll sleep well tonight, put it that way. So genuinely happy for the lads and how hard they worked.

“A fantastic performance of gritting away, getting a goal and keeping that spirit. So glad we got the three points. We started really well – the situation happened. It was a moment of madness, avoidable.

“But all I can say is Idrissa has apologised to us at full-time, said his piece and that’s all he can do. We move on from it. The reaction from us, was unbelievable. Top tier. We could have crumbled but if anything, it made us grow.

“He [David Moyes, at half-time] just said: ‘That’s done now. We’ll deal with that another time.’ It was about keeping to the plan we had. He made sure we do the right things, continue what we’re dong. We can’t change that now, second half we continued to do that.”

Manager Moyes revealed that Gueye also thanked his team-mates for their performance – and said he doesn’t actually mind his two players fighting one another. He said: “I’m surprised. If nothing happened, I don’t think anybody in the stadium would’ve been surprised.

“I thought the referee could have taken a little bit longer to think about it. I’m getting told the rules of the game mean if you slap even your own player, or lift an arm, then you could be in trouble.

“There’s another side of it – I quite like my players fighting each other and getting annoyed with each other for a bad ball or someone doesn’t do the right action. I think that’s part of it.

“If you want a winning team, that resilience, that toughness which got us the result, the players need to have that. I’m disappointed we got the sending off but everybody who has played this level will tell you that quite often you’ll get angry with your team-mates.

“He’s apologised in the dressing room for the sending off. He’s praised the players incredibly for their performance and he’s thanked them for it. And as I said, he’s apologised for what happened.”

On the overall performance, Moyes said: “The resilience and the toughness was really good. The players had to show that tonight. To go down to 10 men here, Manchester United are in pretty good form at the moment and playing much better so it was never going to be an easy game with 11 players.

“To do it with 10 is an incredible job from the players. They were so good. Those things happen in football but you have to deal with them. The players did a brilliant job making sure we got the win.”

While disappointed United defender Matthijs de Ligt reacted: “It’s quite clear. A bad night for us. 70 minutes more or less 11 vs 10, conceded a goal and not creating many chances. A few but not enough for a match against 10. A disappointing night.

“From our side, we didn’t do enough. Didn’t make the runs or bodies into the box. They are strong in the air so we didn’t have the players to score from that. We basically played to their strengths. These are the main aspects, but we have to look at ourselves and it’s not good enough.

“We’ve been away and trained for a while together. I just think we lacked a bit of urgency in several situations. They get punished if you lack these urgency. If you don’t score, you lose this game. We lacked this hunger to make a difference on the most important moments.”