Idrissa Gueye speaks out after swipe at Everton team-mate Michael Keane in Man Utd win as Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall reveals David Moyes' half-time reaction to stunning red card

The incident erupted when Keane seemingly took exception to Gueye carelessly giving the ball away near to Everton's goal, which resulted in Manchester United having a shot. There were angry words exchanged and then pushing and shoving between the pair, during which Gueye's hand swiped at Keane's face. He was quickly pulled away from the situation by goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, but it was the latter action which resulted in the midfielder being sent off.

The red card meant that Everton played all but 13 minutes of the match with a player disadvantage, miraculously still able to pick up a rare 1-0 win at Old Trafford, and Gueye didn't fail to see the significance of what he had done.

"I want to apologise first to my team-mate Michael Keane," the player began, in a statement published as an Instagram story. "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."

Before going public, Gueye had already said sorry to the rest of the Everton squad behind closed doors, straight after the full-time whistle in Manchester.

"Idrissa has apologised to us at full-time, said his piece and that's all he can do," Dewsbury-Hall, scorer of what proved to be Everton's winning goal in the first half, told Sky Sports afterwards.

"We move on from it. The reaction from us, was unbelievable. Top tier. We could have crumbled but if anything, it made us grow.

The former Chelsea midfielder was also asked what Moyes had made of the dismissal and how the manager had reacted to it at half-time, adding: "He 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 doing. We can't change that now, second half we continued to do that."

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He might have thought very differently had the game not finished up as Everton's first win at Old Trafford since 2013 – ironically when Moyes himself was Manchester United manager and Bryan Oviedo scored the decisive Toffees goal – but the Scot claimed he saw a major positive in the Gueye flashpoint because of what it represented.

"There's another side to it," Moyes said. "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."

On the actual decision to send Gueye off in the first place, Moyes added: "If nothing happened, I don't think anyone in the stadium would have been surprised. I thought the referee could have taken a bit longer to think about it. I got told that the rules of the game are that if you slap your own player, you could be in trouble.

"I'm disappointed we got the sending off. But we've all been footballers, we get angry with our team-mates. He's apologised for the sending off, he's praised the players and thanked them for it and apologised for what happened."

Sky Sports co-commentator Gary Neville disagreed with the decision to send Gueye off: "How much venom was in that slap? He has been sent off for that. Was it a little slap or a proper whack? There is no doubt a hand comes out to the face but it didn't look too much. They might have had to send him off purely because there is a strike to the face. They were not fighting, it wasn't a scrap. It could have been dealt with by a yellow. I don't think it needed to be a red."

The standard punishment for a straight red card in the Premier League is an automatic three-game ban, which the FA has the power to increase on a case by case basis, depending on the severity of the incident. With debate as to whether a red card was even a fair punishment, this instance differs vastly from the infamous on-field between Newcastle team-mates Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer, who had bans upgraded to seven games, so increasing it is highly unlikely.

As it stands, Gueye will miss Everton's three upcoming Premier League games against Newcastle, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, and will be eligible to return for the trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea on December 13.