An Everton player was sent off for slapping his own teammate. And they still beat United

When a player is shown a straight red card for slapping their teammate in the face, after just 13 minutes of action ... that should be that, really. Game over.

How does any team, reduced to 10 men because of the utter stupidity of the 11th, recover from that sort of embarrassing situation? Tactically, psychologically? Especially when you’re playing Manchester United at Old Trafford?

The first thing to say about Everton midfielder Idrissa Gana Gueye’s send-off is that it has happened before.

The last time we saw it in the Premier League was in 2008, when Stoke City’s Ricardo Fuller slapped his own captain, Andy Griffin, in the face. They went on to lose 2-1 to West Ham United.

The most famous example, however, came three years prior, when Newcastle United teammates Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer sized each other up and started throwing haymakers while the ball was still in play, two minutes after conceding the third goal in a 3-0 defeat to Aston Villa.

Bowyer later revealed he was annoyed that Dyer hadn’t passed him the ball earlier, when he felt he was in a goalscoring position, and tensions between them boiled over. At the club’s behest, he wore the blame, missing Newcastle’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United as part of a six-match suspension, and was also charged by police.

History tells us, then, that nothing good follows friendly fire. Except, perhaps, when you’re playing Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2025.

Only they, it seems, could be handed such a golden opportunity by their opponents and still find a way to say: no, thanks, but we appreciate the offer.

Gueye’s bust-up with Everton defender Michael Keane was an obvious signal of internal distress. Unhappy after a miscommunication that gifted Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes a free shot on goal, Gueye’s inability to keep his emotions in check, and the resultant punishment from referee Tony Harrington, should have ended their chances.

Dragged off by two other teammates, his forced exit should have been the moment when United seized control, went for the jugular and extended their unbeaten run under Ruben Amorim to six games.

Instead ... nothing.

Less than nothing, actually. Just before the half-hour mark, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall palmed off the challenges of two United defenders and sent a shot from the edge of the box into the top corner of the net to give Everton a 1-0 lead. The only goal of the game. David Moyes, the former United boss who is coaching Everton for the second time, finally left Old Trafford with a win as the opposition manager; the Toffees, meanwhile, became the first team in history to cop a red card and still claim victory there.

Despite playing with a numerical advantage for 77 minutes and racking up 24 shots to Everton’s three, United could not muster a reply.

Though those numbers suggest they had enough chances to win the match, and that their players failed to hold up their end of the bargain, much of the post-match discussion once again centred on Amorim’s tactical stubbornness, and his refusal to change his 3-4-3 system to get more numbers on the ball and capitalise on Gueye’s moment of madness.

Gueye apologised post-match, in typical modern style - via a written statement on his Instagram story - and the result enabled Moyes to look on the lighter side.

“I like my players fighting each other!” he said.

“If you want that toughness and resilience to get a result, you want someone to act on it. I thought the referee could have taken a bit longer to think about it ... I’m disappointed we got the sending off. But we’ve all been footballers, we get angry with our teammates.”

Amorim concurred.

“Fighting is not a bad thing,” he said. “Fighting doesn’t mean that they don’t like each other. Fighting is that you lose the ball [so] I will fight you because we will suffer a goal. That was how I felt when I watched. And I don’t agree with the sending off.”