Paddy Kenny has revealed a series of angry messages he received from Eni Aluko after criticising her take on the Declan Rice transfer saga.
Aluko claimed that Manchester City were never actually interested in signing the West Ham star despite placing a £90m bid, instead suggesting Mikel Arteta had asked Pep Guardiola to put an offer in to boost Arsenal’s chances of signing the England international.
Responding to Aluko’s comments, which she made on talkSPORT, ex-Premier League goalkeeper Kenny said: ‘Never heard owt like it in my life. How does she get airtime?? Biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard.’
A week later, Kenny has shared screenshots of the furious DMs he has received from Aluko over his tweet.
He captioned the post: ‘Someone is rattled and comes across very big time,’ as well adding on the screen: ‘Think I’ve upset her,’ followed by three laughing emojis,
Paddy Kenny (left) has leaked a series of furious messages received from Eni Aluko (right) after criticising her take on the Declan Rice transfer saga on talkSPORT
Kenny said Aluko’s take that Mikel Arteta asked Pep Guardiola to place a bid for Declan Rice was the ‘biggest load of bull’ that he has ever heard
Kenny has leaked the messages he received from Aluko, who says the former Premier League goalkeeper is ‘jealous and bitter’
In her leaked messages, Aluko said: ‘Hi Paddy, can’t say I’ve ever seen you as a pundit get airtime. There’s probably a reason for that.
‘Disagree respectfully but coming for former players who have been pundits at the highest level for 10 years makes you look jealous and bitter mate. Not a great look.’
She then proceeded to send a video link of one of Kenny’s podcast appearances and added: ‘Brilliant punditry talking about getting stoned. Amazing use of your airtime. Sorry what podcast was this?
‘Let me know when you’re on talkSPORT, ITV, BT, Amazon – I’ll tune in and see how you use your “airtime”.’
City lodged a £90m bid for Rice last month, which prompted the comments from Aluko.
She told talkSPORT: ‘I think there’s a lot of cat and mouse going on here. As a sporting director I used to do this a lot where I’d call up a big club and say “can you put a bid in?” – and that would get my owner to put a higher bid in.
‘I don’t think Manchester City actually want to sign Declan Rice, I think what’s going on here is Mikel Arteta has picked up the phone to Pep and said “listen, Arsenal are going to do the incremental bid approach. If you put a higher bid in that will push my owner”.’
City’s bid was later rejected before Guardiola’s side pulled out of the race one day after Aluko’s comments, with the Premier League champions refusing to match Arsenal’s improved offer of £105m.
Aluko suggested Guardiola put in a bid for Rice after being asked to do so by Arteta
She believes she was proven right after City pulled out of the race to sign the midfielder
Rice now looks destined for a move to Arteta’s side this summer, with the Gunners potentially on course to close the deal this week.
Aluko said that City’s decision to pull out of the race proved her theory to be correct.
She said: ‘Safe to say I suspected Rice wasn’t going up the M6 to Manchester! I’ve had a lot of laughs on this today, it was very quiet from the pile-on brigade – somehow a lot of haters went missing. Apologies are much quieter than disrespect.
‘Disagreement is part of the job. But disagreement should never be used by people to be sexist, racist, misogynistic to women in football. It’s an absolute disgrace and I won’t ignore it for the benefit of a lot of men who project their own jealousy & insecurity spouting abuse. Women in football are not going away. Get used to it.’
Kenny is not the only person she has clashed with since giving her theory on the Rice saga.
She also clashed with Simon Jordan when she returned to talkSPORT two days after her original comments.
Jordan told Aluko: ‘With respect, what you’re saying is that they’ve put a phone call into a rival. Or they’ve manufactured a situation with a rival to create an outcome.
As she began to respond by claiming it was a matter of ‘communication’ rather than ‘manipulation’, Jordan continued: ‘You’re getting a rival to bid for something that they don’t really want to engineer a commercial outcome for you. That’s precisely what it is, Eni.
‘I didn’t see that happen in any transfer deals I did, and I was close in many transfer deals, and when you’re throwing £250,000 at a player with all due respect, there’s a lot less focus than if you’re spending £90million.
Aluko also clashed with Simon Jordan (pictured) over her take regarding the Rice saga
‘People will be very focused on it. Owner, chief executive – they’ll all want to understand. The two biggest commodities in football are gossip and finances, and with that comes a lot of invested interest.
‘What you’ve said is that a situation has manifested itself where Man City engineered a bid to produce an outcome for Arsenal to get the player they want. That’s manipulation, by its very definition.’
Aluko, drawing upon her own experiences in football, replied: ‘Ultimately, what I’m talking about is communication.
‘I had communication with clubs about the level they were going to bid anyway on these players and that helped me then go back and say “right now we need to decide what we’re going to do”. So those clubs were going to bid anyway…’
Jordan then interrupted, saying: ‘But that makes no sense, Eni, in the commercial reality of the hard world. If you’re a competitor, the last thing I’m going to do is give you any indication of what I’m prepared to do to get a deal done.’
Aluko continued: ‘That’s not my experience. In my experience, I communicated with my rivals. In men’s football that might be very different, but with hundreds of millions of pounds being spent, I think it’s naïve to think clubs don’t communicate.’
