The agent of former Manchester United striker Carlos Tevez has hit back at Gary Neville over a series of accusations leveled at the Argentine and his representatives this week.
Neville made the assertion earlier in the week that Tevez no longer wanted to be at Old Trafford towards the end of the 2008-09 season before he won a move to rivals Manchester City.
Kia Joorabchian responded on Sky Sports this morning: "I am here because Gary said something that I think he was absolutely wrong. I often let things go, but when you go after somebody and make incorrect statements, by letting it go will not benefit the public to listen to fake information.
"He mentioned Tevez down-tooling and his professionalism and there were problems in his second year about people talking in his ear. I would like to know who was talking in his ear and what they were saying because unless they were hacking them or taping him, it would have been impossible to know what they were saying.
"I said Gary played four times in that year but he only played one time in that year, because unfortunately he was injured. Gary couldn't have known much about that year, because he played 10 minutes. He was mostly on the treatment table and that's the year he actually said good things about Carlos.
"Finally, Sir Alex Ferguson – you had nothing but respect for the man. The one thing I learned about him was that he had his finger to the pulse. He was a strong coach, he knew what his players were doing. In Gary making those comments, he is questioning whether Sir Alex had his finger to the pulse. He picked Carlos 51 times in the 2008-09 season, Rooney 49 times, Berbatov 44 times.
"And Gary played only 29 that season. In those 51 games, Carlos got 15 goals, seven assists. Berbatov 14 goals, 11 assists, Rooney 20 goals and 13 assists. Sir Alex would not have picked someone 51 times if he was down tooling or being unprofessional. Unless Gary was thinking Sir Alex took his eye off the ball."
Neville replied: "When I refer to the people in his ear. It is true he was owned by third party ownership. But City paid £50million to Tevez's owners where United paid £25m for the option. I felt there was so much distraction around the third party ownership.
"These were things that were in his ears all the time. He was definitely a different person in last four or five months. What I would say is downed tools might be a little bit crass, but he was certainly distracted and he was different."
