James Maddison aimed a dig at Roy Keane after scoring the winning goal in Tottenham Hotspur’s 1-0 victory over Manchester United on Sunday.
Maddison’s close-range finish on 13 minutes settled a low-quality contest in north London, which came at the end of a week in which former United midfielder Keane said: “Maddison isn’t bad when he’s not at the darts…but if you think he’s going to come back and get Spurs top six, you’re in cuckoo land.”
Speaking to the Stick to Football podcast, Keane added: “He’s a talented player, but if you’re a player in the Spurs dressing room and he’s back in the squad, you wouldn’t be looking and going, ‘James is back today — we’re going to be fine!'”
The 28-year-old marked his close-range finish by throwing an imaginary dart and then putting his finger to his lips in a silencing motion and afterwards, he told Sky Sports: “There was a little bit of outside noise this week.
“People will have their opinions. I wanted to do my talking on the pitch today so I hope there’s a certain few that enjoyed me being the match-winner today.
“Nobody is more critical of myself than me. To be fair to the gaffer, he always talks about blocking out the outside noise, but sometimes it is difficult, it is constantly in your face.
“You can use it [as motivation], but I think the gaffer prefers it when we’re just in our little bubble and just listening to him.
“But sometimes it is difficult because it is constantly in your face these days with social media, WhatsApp and people sending stuff. You do see it and it is there. Sometimes [it is fed through to my phone], especially when it is a big high-profile name. But listen, it is about responding in the right way and I did that today.”
Spurs moved up to 12th place in the table with United languishing in 15th place and Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou said of Maddison: “Everybody has mentioned his celebration, but I didn’t see it so I can’t comment on it, but it doesn’t surprise me that Madders didn’t accept what was being said about him and threw a shot back over the bow.
“It’s just great to have him back. He is a quality player. If you just look at his goals return from midfield this year it’s still right up there. He got frustrated when he got injured and to be honest we didn’t think he would be back for a couple of weeks but he has worked awfully hard in training and done everything right to make sure he was available.
“I think that is the key thing for us and we have seen it with all our players, particularly in recent times. The injured lads are all desperate to contribute. They have seen what the other guys have gone through and are just pushing hard.”
Postecoglou acknowledged the difficult situation Ruben Amorim is in at United, who were missing 12 players through injury and illness, but the Australian coach quickly added he wouldn’t be sending any sympathy cards.
“If I check my office, I don’t have any sympathy cards from other managers, so that hasn’t happened,” Postecoglou said. “There’s definitely a few [injuries]. I could see Ruben there, players out of position, kids on the bench.
“Well, welcome to my world. But that’s for one game. Now do that for two months. Do that for two months. Any club. Do that for two months. I thought Man United were good today, considering all that, and we had our days when we were good, we beat Liverpool in this spell.”
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