Danny Murphy has blasted the behaviour of Bobby Duncan’s agent following his explosive statement criticising Liverpool.
Saif Rubie, who represents the 18-year-old striker, took to social media to accuse the Reds of ‘mentally bullying’ his client after a loan offer from Fiorentina was rejected.
Liverpool have since dismissed the ‘unfounded’ allegations, and Murphy quickly sprung to the defence of his former club.
Liverpool fan says he would follow Virgil van Dijk if he left Liverpool and even cheer if he scored AGAINST Reds
He told talkSPORT: “Liverpool is a wonderful institution which has dealt with top players and young players for many years, and it has a great reputation in doing so.
“There’s no way [sporting director] Michael Edwards or anyone else at the club is going to be bullying anybody.”
Murphy believes Rubie’s Twitter outburst could actually prove detrimental to Duncan, who also happens to be Steven Gerrard’s cousin, as he attempts to make a name for himself in professional football.
“An agent has a responsibility to look after a player and put the player’s welfare first,” the former midfielder added.
“That means creating a relationship with the club that he’s playing at which is best for his career moving forward.
“That doesn’t mean they’re always going to get on. But the last thing you want to do is put your business with the club regarding the player on social media.
‘There has been a lot of things said the last few weeks regarding Bobby Duncan’s future at Liverpool.
‘And today [Wednesday] is the final straw of the behaviour and dealing of Liverpool sporting director Michael Edwards.
‘A few months ago before the end of last season, Bobby had meetings with the club’s hierarchy including academy director Alex Inglethorpe.
‘It was recognised that Bobby wasn’t happy at Liverpool for different reasons and Alex invited us to bring offers to the club for the exit of Bobby Duncan.
‘For a player with zero first team experience, no clubs were prepared to pay an outright reasonable fee for a player they got for £200,000 last summer.
‘With that in mind we have been able to find clubs that were ready to take Bobby on a season-long loan with a option to buy for amounts of £1.5million upwards which is a great return for the club on a player who will never play for the Liverpool first team and who doesn’t want to be there.
‘The club and Michael Edwards specifically made it clear that that kind of deal wouldn’t work.
‘So then myself and my team worked even harder and managed to get a deal on the table for a loan with an obligation to buy after five starts with a higher transfer fee than before and a sell-on to Liverpool.
‘Putting all of that aside, the real reason Bobby missed the Under 23 game (against Southampton) on Monday is because he has suffered some deep mental health issues with all the stress the club has put him under.
‘Stress of being told he can leave but then going out of their way to force him to stay against his will.
‘Not only is he on a very small salary but he also has one season left on his contract after this one and Liverpool have flatly said he will not get a new one.
‘Bobby has not left his room for four days because of this and will never go back to Liverpool again and my only concern now is his mental health and well being.
‘The Liverpool hierarchy have shown zero consideration to that and have even gone as far as saying in writing that they will punish him and make him stay at the club until January and beyond to teach him a lesson.
‘This is not really dignified behaviour from a club with the rich history of Liverpool and one who one of their greatest ever players Steven Gerrard happens to be Bobby’s cousin.
‘It’s a sad state of affairs that a club such as a Liverpool can be allowed to get away with mentally bullying and destroying the life of a young man such as Bobby.
‘I know one thing for sure, and that is he is never going back there again and he’s on such a small salary that no amount of fines will even make a difference.
‘In this situation all that matters is the players health and in this case Michael Edwards has totally ignored that because of his own stubbornness and I really pray that his experience doesn’t happen to any young players again.’
“That means you’re not doing your job properly as an agent if you have to go to social media to start moaning and calling people out.
“It’s bizarre why the agent thinks this is beneficial. It’s ludicrous for the agent to put out that they’re bullying and using these tactics, there’s no way they’ll be doing that.
“No agent should be talking about his player’s mental health problems. That should be dealt with at the club and not put out on social media.”
Another former Red, Jamie Carragher, has also taken issue with Rubie’s comments. The pair got into a spat on Twitter with Carragher urging Duncan to ditch his agent as soon as possible.
Liverpool dismissed Rubie’s claim in a statement of their own.
“Liverpool Football Club is aware of and disappointed by the unattributed comments and unfounded allegations that have been made in the media regarding one of our players,” the statement read.
“As the interests of the player in question are not best served by either inaccurate speculation, inflammatory statements or public discourse, we will be making no further comment.
“We will, however, continue our efforts to work privately with the player to find resolution in the best interests of all involved.”
Saturday is GameDay on talkSPORT and talkSPORT 2 as we become your go to destination for all the Premier League action. We’ll bring you LIVE commentary of Premier League games across all three time slots on Saturday – 12.30pm, 3pm and 5.30pm – delivering award-winning coverage to more GameDay listeners than ever.
Click Here: kenzo online españa