In case you weren't aware, it's probably best not to boast on social media about your wealth - especially when you are a professional sportsperson and your team is struggling.
So this Joleon Lescott tweet in the minutes/hours of Villa's 6-0 drubbing at the hands of Liverpool understandably did not go down well with fans:
— Joleon Lescott (@JoleonLescott) February 14, 2016
Lescott since blamed the tweet as a pocket-tweet, which we'd question. However, speaking to the Times today, Lescott has further explained the incident and how much the fan's abuse has affected him.
The defender claims that the car in the picture isn't even his, but was sent to him to ask his opinion:
I don’t own that car. I wouldn’t tweet that picture. A young player, a friend of mine said: ‘I’m thinking of getting this car, what do you think?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s a nice car but be careful because the insurance might be high.’ That was the only reason the picture was on my phone. Whether things have gone well or not, I’d never tweeted. There was no comment on the tweet. Just a picture. I don’t see why people don’t believe it was a genuine mistake.
When he puts it like that it does seem a lot more plausible an explanation for how it could possibly be tweeted from his pocket. That wasn't the first time Lescott was involved in a spat with ever increasingly frustrated Villa fans either. It actually all started against Wycombe in the FA Cup when Lescott was on the bench. The Villians lost that day, and the fans were unhappy with Lescott because he was smiling on the bench after talking to Brad Guzan:
Wycombe was a strange one. I was on the bench with Brad Guzan, talking about the game, things, and I must have smiled at some point. When Wycombe scored, our fans got upset, and banged on the back of the dug-out, shouting and swearing at us, saying: ‘You don’t care.’ I said: ‘I’m on the bench, what do you want me to do?’
Lescott says he does care - that he is a Villa fan, and if he didn't he wouldn't still be at the club. Apparently LA Galaxy pushed hard to sign him in January, but Lescott wanted to see out the season in Birmingham:
There was some genuine interest from LA Galaxy in January. But for me to jump ship . . . I don’t want that to be my legacy. I’d prefer us to go down and me be a part of that than, ‘Oh, he left in January, spent six months and felt it was not his responsibility.’
Given the accusations thrown at him in the last few months since, he may have saved himself a lot of abuse by leaving.
