Everton to review Kevin Mirallas red card at Swansea

20 September 2015 12:16

Everton will review Kevin Mirallas' red card at Swansea which is set to rule him out of the Merseyside derby next month.

Substitute Mirallas had been on the pitch for less than two minutes of the goalless draw when he was dismissed for a challenge on Modou Barrow.

Referee Stuart Atwell felt Mirallas had gone over the ball before making contact with Barrow and the Belgium international is now set to receive a three-match ban and miss Barclays Premier League games against West Brom and Liverpool as well as the Capital One Cup tie at Reading on Tuesday.

"I haven't seen it again," Everton manager Roberto Martinez said of the incident. " But we will look into it and if we've got grounds on it we'll act accordingly.

"I thought it was more a striker trying to defend and putting in a challenge and it looked worse than it actually was.

"I felt he didn't have intention to hurt the Swansea player."

Everton have yet to concede away from home in the league this season with their Swansea shut-out coming on the back of a goalless draw at Tottenham and a 3-0 win at Southampton.

But their Liberty Stadium clean sheet was probably the most impressive as injuries forced Martinez to deploy two inexperienced full-backs in an all-English back-four.

Brendan Galloway and Tyias Browning had only six Premier League starts between them at kick-off and the latter was making his top-flight debut, but the pair managed to limit the threat of Swansea dangermen Jefferson Montero and Andre Ayew down the flanks.

"To keep a clean sheet with that youth and the amount of changes we had to make at full-back I'm extremely proud of what we are as a football club," Martinez said.

"I'm sure Tyias will forgive me for putting him one on one against Montero on his full debut and one day he'll look back and have a laugh.

"But he's the best defender we've got in the squad on one-on-one situations.

"It took him a couple of actions to get used to Jefferson and the tempo of the Premier League, but after that he coped and I'm sure any task from now on is going to be a piece of cake for him."

Mirallas' red card meant Swansea ended up playing against 10 men for the fourth time in six league games this season but there were only seconds left when the forward was banished.

It was the first time Swansea had dropped points at home after victories over Newcastle and Manchester United but skipper Ashley Williams felt they had shown the right attitude after losing at Watford.

"All the players put their bodies on the line," Williams told the official Swansea website.

"You could see the desire in everyone to show the right intentions on the pitch, which we didn't do last weekend against Watford.

"We knew we had to re-focus coming into this match, we trained like animals all week to get that hunger back into the team.

"We could have been a bit better when in possession, but I think our performance showed we came out fighting."

Source: PA