'I defied Roy Keane after shower row - he quit coaching position the next day'

Gabriel Agbonlahor has reignited his long-running spat with Roy Keane after revealing the circumstances surrounding his Aston Villa departure. The two Premier League pundits have exchanged sharp words over the years , with Keane previously branding certain players at Villa "scumbags" during his spell there.

Agbonlahor, 39, had been part of the first-team Villa set-up for nearly a decade by the time Keane joined Paul Lambert's backroom staff in 2014. He described one episode towards the end of Keane's tenure in October of that year when the Manchester United legend hurled a Red Bull can into the showers in anger, claiming such methods "don't work."

It was the following week where the pair clashed in training after the Villa players failed to execute a drill properly. And Agbonlahor, who was one of Lambert's captains, fell afoul of Keane when he defended the squad.

Speaking on In The Mixer , brought to you by Sky Bet, Agbonlahor said: "We done this training session where the whole team's doing a crossing and shooting session but [it's] six or seven passes before you get like a cross in a shot. The standard wasn't great but you're taking one shot every 10 minutes, so the players are getting cold.

"Gaffer Paul Lambert pulls it in and says alright guys, not good enough. Me as one of the captains there says, 'Gaffer, everyone's getting cold'.

" Roy Keane was like, 'Oh you're getting cold. Are you wanting to warm up?' Being sarcastic. So at that time the players had enough of him. I just said, like, 'Roy, I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the manager'."

That show of defiance didn't seem to sit well with the Old Trafford icon. And Agbonlahor reckoned the timing of his departure shortly afterwards was too much of a coincidence not to be connected.

"He gives me them eyes, them angry eyes," he continued. "He's glaring at me and then the gaffer's gone, 'blah blah blah'. And then the next day he left.

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"He left Villa because I think he probably thought, 'These players are going to make me do something I regret'. He was gone but for me it was more like, 'You're not going to bully me'."

Keane, 54, departed his Villa role in November 2014 after just five months at the club. At the time, he claimed it was driven by his wish to focus on his coaching duties with the Republic of Ireland squad, though he subsequently acknowledged friction with the players.

It was during an appearance on The Overlap Live in 2022 that Keane laid bare the details of his own exit from the club. He branded certain players at Villa Park "scumbags" for their behaviour in refusing to commit as he would have wished.

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He said: "It's when you leave United and go to other clubs you realise the players don't train properly, the players don't turn up for training, they don't speak to the gaffer properly. You only find out when you leave.

"I was at Aston Villa for a while. One or two players were, like, scumbags. They'd be scumbags on a building site. They wouldn't train properly. The way they'd speak to staff - you're thinking 'amazing!'"

Agbonlahor, meanwhile, has repeatedly taken aim at his former superior for falling short in the man-management department. He has in the past taken Keane to task over his remarks criticising Harry Maguire and labelled him a "bitter guy" in 2023 for demanding more from Declan Rice .

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