Aston Villa hero and talkSPORT pundit Gabriel Agbonlahor has hit back at Jurgen Klopp over his criticism of his mentality after the former England international had berated Erik ten Hag in the press for his poor start to life as Manchester United manager.
United lost their first two games 2-1 and 4-0 as they remained rooted to the bottom of the Premier League, and that could continue with another loss at home to Liverpool on Monday night.
Agbonlahor ripped into United’s players for their dismal performance against Brentford last Saturday, with the Red Devils going into the break 4-0 down at half-time in one of their worst displays in their history.
But Klopp hit back after listening to Agbonlahor’s rant, and the German called him out for his lack of mentality in a press conference earlier this week.
“I drove home, watched the first half here [at the Liverpool training ground], drove home and listened to talkSPORT. And Gabby, he lost against us 6-0 in my first year. I couldn’t remember him as a ‘mentality monster’ on the pitch,” Klopp previously said.
“But what he said about United on that show, I was close to calling in and telling him, ‘You have forgotten completely that you have been a player’. It was unbelievable. If ex-players are going already like this, you can imagine how everything else is going.”
And the former pacy hitman has responded by telling Klopp to ‘stick to being a manager’ after his comments left a sour taste in the mouth.
However, the Birmingham-born star has hit back by claiming that his phone ‘blew up’ following Klopp’s response.
“Mate, I woke up and I’ve never seen my phone blow up as much as it was. I was like ‘what’s happened?’, ‘Jurgen Klopp has done this’. When I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the clip, I’m thinking ‘come on Jurgen’. It’s a bit too much, isn’t it,” Agbonlahor told the show on Saturday.
“It’s great for the show that he’s listening to our show, all managers should be.
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“For me, I’ve got bosses at talkSPORT who I answer to. If my reaction to Manchester United being 4-0 down was too much then I’m sure I’d have heard about that.
“I don’t need Jurgen Klopp telling me how to be a pundit, he should concentrate on being a manager. He wouldn’t take advice on being a coach from me, would he? So I’m not going to take advice from him.”
Well said Mr Klopp.. A player that at best was average and when you hear “who is he” every day you know he was a nobody😂average Joe is not that old so he should remember how easy it is to have bad days, games that you just suck, right Joe?