Manchester United have been slammed by their former player Romelu Lukaku for failing to respond to various transfer rumours about him before his move to Inter Milan.
The Belgium international ended up quitting Old Trafford for the San Siro after a difficult two years at United, and he’s now been quoted as hitting out at the way the club handled his departure.
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Speaking on the LightHarted Podcast with NBA star Josh Hart, as quoted by the Daily Mirror, Lukaku admitted he kept on waiting for Man Utd to deny talk that he wasn’t wanted.
He feels no one at MUFC really did that, leading to him ending up wanting out of the club due to the persistent leaks over the course of four or five months.
“A lot of stuff has been said where I didn’t feel protected,” he said.
“I felt like a lot of rumours, ‘Rom going there’, ‘they don’t want Rom’, and nobody came out to shut it down.
“It was for a good three, four weeks. I’m waiting for someone to come out and shut it down. It didn’t happen.
“I had my conversation, told them it was better to go our separate ways. If you don’t want to protect somebody, all these rumours come out.
“I just wanted you to say ‘Rom is going to fight for his place’, but it never happened for four, five months.
“It was all, ‘he’s got to go, he doesn’t deserve to be there’. Well OK, then I want to go now.
“There is fighting for your position, but also being somewhere that people want you to be.
“If you’re happy, you find a way, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the bench or starting.
“But nobody told me that was the situation, so I thought for two, three weeks to analyse, see all this **** coming out in the media. Who leaks it? Not me. Not my agent. I see it on my phone come out of nowhere.
“They have to find somebody. It is Pogba, it is me or it is Alexis. It’s the three of us all the time. For me, I just see it in many ways.
“A lot of people don’t think I should be part of that system. That’s my feeling from the conversations that I have, I just know.”
Red Devils supporters probably won’t be too impressed with Lukaku criticising the club after recently leaving, but it also makes sense that the 26-year-old would want to give his version of events after coming in for a lot of criticism in his time as a United player.