Bilic gives both barrels to Arnautovic

Raging Slaven Bilic has blasted Marko Arnautovic and admits he is still fuming at the £24million record signing’s sickening attack on Southampton’s Jack Stephens.

Most knew that attitude and risk came with the former Stoke man’s arrival but Bilic has rarely been seen so angry as he was during yestrday’s presser – banging the table with every word.

He has pledged to “of course fine him” but stormed: “You can’t do those kind of things. 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 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.”