Everton went down to 10 men after Idrissa Gueye was sent off for slapping Michael Keane against Manchester United.
Idrissa Gueye is restrained as he is sent off during Everton's win over Manchester United
Idrissa Gueye is restrained as he is sent off during Everton's win over Manchester United
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Everton's Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall revealed David Moyes told his team to put the red card for Idrissa Gueye to the back of their minds at half-time of their win against Manchester United. The visitors started brightly but looked to be in trouble after a crazy incident on 13 minutes.
After Michael Keane failed to react to a pass from Gueye, the midfielder squared up to the defender and slapped him across the face. Referee Tony Harrington had little choice but to send the Everton man off.
The Toffees still went in at the break ahead as Dewsbury-Hall's strike went past Senne Lammens to win the game. Reflecting on the red card incident on Sky Sports, Dewsbury-Hall said: "I think it was a moment of madness. It was of course avoidable.
"I thought the reaction after that was top tier because we could have easily crumbled, gone in on ourselves and lost the game comfortably but it made us grow as a team. He [Moyes] just said 'look, that’s done now, we will deal with that another time, it is just about keeping to the plan we had'.
"We played really well, even after the 10 men and he just wanted to make sure we were doing the right things and continue doing what we were doing and just focus on the game. We couldn’t change that now, it was done, all we could do was focus on the game and we did that in the second half and got the three points."
While it was a famous victory for Everton, United will be disappointed they didn't do more to get something from the game. The Reds had a lot of shots but few tested Jordan Pickford.
Joshua Zirkzee came closest to equalising but he saw two headers saved by England's No.1 as the Merseyside club held on to win. United remain 10th in the Premier League, three points off the top four.