Slaven Bilic has revealed that midfielder Marko Arnautovic has apologised to his team-mates ‘three or four times’ following his sending off against Southampton on Saturday.
The Austrian saw red just past the half hour mark in the 3-2 defeat for a nasty elbow on Jack Stephens, leaving his team-mates to play the final hour with only 10 men.
Bilic, while still angry at the former Stoke City star’s role in the incident, says Arnautovic regrets what happened and insists the 28-year-old must move on.
Bilic said: “I had a chat. He’s sorry and he apologised, I don’t know, three or four times. He apologised in front of the whole team on the bus, in the dressing room, everywhere.
“It’s nice, but you can’t do that. According to him, he didn’t want to elbow [Stephens], but he probably wanted to push him a little bit. The problem is he [caught him], Arnautovic is big and it gave it an extra dimension.
“We can talk about this and that, but the point is you can’t do that. You can’t do those kind of things. It happened, I’m fuming about it, but no more, not him or anyone else.”
Arnautovic will serve a three match ban for his elbow on Stephens, and will return against Tottenham in mid-September unless the FA decide to take further action.
