10:40

Schneiderlin opens up on being booed & training ground incidents

Morgan Schneiderlin is on a mission to convince Everton fans that he DOES “give a s***” about his performances and about Everton Football Club - after finally opening up about the training ground incident last season which led to him being booed onto the pitch as a substitute at Goodison Park.

Schneiderlin sat down with The Times’ Northern Football Correspondent Paul Joyce last week and bared his soul about the turbulent months he endured last season.

“It eats me like crazy because the most frustrating thing is that image is not myself,” he said in an interview published today. “I am an honest guy who works very, very hard. I can have a bad game, or a bad performance, but putting that on me that I don’t give a s***, I don’t care — that is not who I am.”

Schneiderlin revealed that he was instantly aware the chorus of boos which greeted his arrival as a substitute against Crystal Palace in February was directed at him.

He said: “I knew straight away. “I knew it was for me because of some notifications (on Twitter). I am not paying too much attention to that, but I got messages saying, ‘You have a bad attitude’, ‘You are not fit to wear the shirt.’ “So I knew there were some people who were not happy. I am a human being and for any human being to have people turn against you is not good. “But I had two ways to see it. I stay strong or I say, ‘Ok, f*** that. I am just going to come into training, work for myself but I don’t care anymore. I don’t play anymore until the end of the season and then I go.’ “That might have been the easier way. But the motivation for myself was to turn the minds of people. That people regret what they said and they have a different perception of me. That is what I want to do.”

On the notorious incident which precipitated that reception - a training ground moment when he and team-mate Kevin Mirallas were apparently invited by coach Duncan Ferguson to leave the pitch following a perceived lack of effort, Schneiderlin agreed to speak to Joyce “the only time he will do so in order to finally move on” - and gave his own version of events.

(Image: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images)

He explained: “On the Saturday (the day) before Watford, we did a warm-up of five minutes and David (Unsworth) said his squad. I didn’t hear my name. “There were four or five of us and he said, ‘You are going to train on the other side of the training ground.’ I had played 80 minutes against Lyon (on the Thursday) — I had run, I was not walking — and Duncan said, ‘I am going to put you as the man in the middle. You are tired. Don’t worry. I know it is frustrating.’ “As you can understand, the tempo was not crazy because everyone was a bit sad and maybe I didn’t touch the ball because it was two v two. “Duncan said to me, ‘Morgan, I understand you are tired, you played two days ago. There is no problem, if you want to rest and go inside, you can rest and go inside.’ I said, ‘Thank you’ and I went inside. “I was not happy, of course. But I was just like maybe 99.9 per cent of the guys are when they are not in the squad and they have to train away from the first team. “Maybe people wanted to see me because we had bad results and they had to find someone to pick and to say, ‘His fault, his fault, his fault.’ That is the life of a football player.”

The full interview with Morgan Schneiderlin is in today’s Times .