Salomon Kalou has revealed that Emmanuel Eboue, the Arsenal midfielder, apologised to John Terry for the challenge which left him on crutches and facing the possibility of Christmas on the sidelines.

The Chelsea captain could be out for several weeks with the ankle injury, after possibly sufferering ligament damage.

Terry had only returned from a knee problem and cheekbone injury on November 24 against Derby County after nearly seven weeks out and will have an X-ray to assess the extent of the damage.

"I was saying to Eboue that it was a red card because he did it on purpose, but he denied that," Kalou, the Chelsea forward, said of his fellow Ivory Coast international.

"He said he tried to block the ball and it was not on purpose. He said sorry to John. He didn't mean to do it, but to apologise was a nice thing to do.

"John will be a big loss and is very important to the squad. We will miss him and it will be difficult to do it without him but we have the players to do that."

Kalou admitted the 1-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium was hard to take but not undeserved.

"It was a tough game and it is always difficult to play Arsenal because they play really good football," he said.

"Yesterday we made it easy for them because we didn't try to play our football and defended a lot. They deserved the result. We didn't set out to play defensively. We played the formation we always play but maybe they were too quick and kept the ball well. It was difficult to take the ball from them."