Despite a lack of game time thus far, new signing Xherdan Shaqiri's Liverpool career has certainly been eventful as a host of pundits and players have criticised the Switzerland international.
During the 2018 World Cup, Gary Neville made his opinion of the central midfielder evidently clear on ITV: "I'm not a fan of Shaqiri to be honest with you. I think that was, to be fair, worse by the fact that he distanced himself from his team-mates as Stoke. They were unprofessional last season, Stoke. There's no doubt, and he epitomised it."
Soon after, Charlie Adam, who played alongside Shaqiri last season as Stoke City were relegated from the Premier League issued similar criticism in an interview with TalkSport as he took aim at teammates who were "getting away with murder."
Was he one of them? Oh, definitely.
When the chips are down you look at your big players, you want your big players to bring magic in one moment in the season, and at times we felt like the so-called big players in the squad never turned up for us and never performed.
Yeah, everybody else could help, but for all the plaudits the so-called bigger players were getting from certain members of the management staff last season – they weren't producing.
His manager at the time was Paul Lambert. The Scottish manager was brought in for the second half of the season and worked with both players. Lambert appeared on BeIN Sports today and provided a fascinating insight into his management of Shaqiri who he claimed never gave him an issue: "I can honestly say I never had one problem with Shaq."
When asked about Adam's comments, Lambert pointed out that he also had significant responsibility for their relegation.
If we had beaten Brighton, as I said before. We had a great chance to do it with a penalty and Charlie should have scored the penalty. If he had done that, we would have been totally fine.
Lambert bites back at @GNev2 over @XS_11official criticism. #beINPL #LFC #SCFC pic.twitter.com/bMUauBsO8X
— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS) August 26, 2018
