West Ham United boss Slaven Bilic has slammed new signing Marko Arnautovic.
Slaven Bilic, Manager of West Ham United
West Ham United boss Slaven Bilic has told The Mirror that he is ‘fuming’ with summer signing Marko Arnautovic following his red card against Southampton on Saturday afternoon.
The Hammers travelled to the South Coast on Saturday after losing 4-0 to Manchester United on the opening weekend of the season, and were hoping to turn in a better display than their defeat at Old Trafford.
However, Manolo Gabbiadini put Southampton in front before new boy Arnautovic was given a straight red card for an elbow on Jack Stephens, with Dusan Tadic then scoring from the penalty spot following a foul from Jose Fonte.
West Ham did claw themselves back into the game with two goals from new striker Javier Hernandez, but the Hammers shot themselves in the foot yet again as Pablo Zabaleta fouled Maya Yoshida in added time, allowing Charlie Austin to score from the penalty spot and hand Southampton all three points.
Marko Arnautovic of West Ham United is shown a red card by referee Lee Mason
Whilst it was Zabaleta who gave away the crucial penalty in the dying embers of the game, it’s winger Arnautovic who has largely been blamed for costing West Ham the game with his red card.
The Austrian winger, who joined West Ham from Stoke City in a club-record deal earlier this summer, had no real reason to elbow Stephens, and completely deserved his marching orders for a bizarre act of violence.
Arnautovic will subsequently miss this weekend’s game against Newcastle United, and manager Slaven Bilic has told The Mirror report that he is still ‘fuming’ with the wide man for his actions against Southampton.
The Croatian revealed that Arnautovic has been apologising incessantly since his red card, but Bilic hammered home that Arnautovic cannot do what he did, and he will be fined for his actions – and didn’t want Arnautovic to be excused for his sending off whilst speaking to the media.
West Ham United’s Marko Arnautovic
“You can’t do those kind of things,” said Bilic. “I am fuming, still now — you can feel. I am fuming, but it happened. But no more. Not him, not anybody else. I am confident the message got through. The players they know and they can’t let the team down and also of course him. And whoever does those kind of things will get the fine, of course. He will get fined. He was angry at himself. He still is. He regrets it, so he is angry at himself. But he can’t do it any more.”
“We had a chat. He said he is sorry, and he apologised, I don’t know, three or four times — on social media, here, in front of the whole team, on the bus, in the dressing room, everywhere. I said, ‘Yes, it is nice.’ Of course it is nice, but you can’t do that. That’s it. How can he explain that? You can’t explain that. You can’t say I was late or whatever. He didn’t want to elbow him and he didn’t elbow him like this, with a swinging arm. He wanted to probably get him somewhere here, in the side, to push him a bit because he was elbowed a few minutes before. But his problem is their player went a bit down so he got him here, in the neck which is already nasty. It doesn’t look good.”
“And second, Arnautovic is big. He is big [6ft 2in]. He is not [5ft 6in team-mate Manuel Lanzini]. He is big, massive — so it gives an extra dimension to it. But we can talk about this and that but you can’t do that. That is the point. So let’s not talk about how it happened. It is irrelevant. Let’s not waste time because the more you talk about how it happened the more normal it becomes, when you are analysing the things you shouldn’t be analysing,” he added.
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