Joleon Lescott lifts lid on who was to blame for infamous car tweet that sparked backlash

Joleon Lescott has made the surprise admission that Jack Grealish was partially at fault for his infamous car tweet during Aston Villa’s catastrophic relegation campaign. Signing in 2015, Lescott was one of 11 new faces as Villa looked to refresh the squad – but the season turned out to be a desperately miserable one.

The Villans, who started the season with Tim Sherwood in charge and also sacked Remi Garde, accumulated only 17 points as the club dropped out of the top flight after 28 years. Having won the Premier League with Manchester City two years earlier, Lescott made 30 league appearances as Villa slumped to 20th place.

His abysmal stint at Villa Park hit a new low when Lescott unwittingly posted a picture of a luxury Mercedes just after a crushing 6-0 loss to Liverpool on Valentine’s Day in 2016. Despite claiming to be a pocket-tweet while driving, Lescott revealed that current City winger Grealish has offered to take some responsibility for the incident.

“We need to get Jack [Grealish] on to clear this up because Jack says to me all the time, ‘I’m going to do a podcast and tell them it was my fault,'” Lesoctt said on The Rest is Football podcast. “I’m like it’s not that deep, Jack, to be honest.

“Now, everyone tweets after games and thanks the fans and all that, I never did that anyway, win, lose or draw. The car was a bit wild but how it came about was Jack had sent it to me. Me and [Micah Richards] were driving home and then my phone was blowing off and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I’m driving so I don’t know what’s happened.

“My mum was like, ‘You don’t even have that car’. I know, it’s not mine,” Lescott continued. “[Grealish] googled a picture of the car he wanted. My mum told me to post a picture of my real car and I was like, ‘No, Mum! It’ll look like I treated myself to a Rolls Royce – it doesn’t really work like that, I don’t think it’s going to go away so I just left it.”

In his defence, Lescott explained: “I must have checked Twitter [after the game] but history would suggest I never tweeted after games so to do that is a bit wild. After I put my phone away, it just uploaded it. I was like, ‘What is going on?'”

Despite Villa teammate Micah Richards pleading with Lescott to claim he was hacked, the post has remained on his profile. It was said that Grealish had sent him the image because of his sideline car leasing business.

That was not the first time that Lescott had felt the wrath of the Villa faithful. An FA Cup defeat to Wycombe led to fans banging on the dugout while he was on the bench. The centre-back had already been plotting an escape route to LA Galaxy but his reaction to fan backlash during a midweek game against Crystal Palace cost Lescott his MLS move.

“We get to the [Palace] game, [Richards] was on the bench, I’m starting and I’m captain,” Lescott said. “When they read out my name, everyone booed. I don’t think I’ve ever been that mad, ever. I was fuming.

“In my head, I was like, ‘I’m going to prove to you today that I’m not the only reason we’re in this situation’. I think we’d lost like 12 on the bounce. We were playing Crystal Palace who had the best away record at the time. We win 1-0 and I score. I don’t even think I celebrated, I was fuming it had gone to that and the fans took it like I was the only person that put us in the situation.

“LA called the next day and Villa were like we’re going to need a fee, we think we can stay up. I was like, ‘What?!’ I ended up staying otherwise I’d have had to kick up a fuss and force my way out. I wasn’t doing that, it was a done deal four days ago. I ended up staying at Villa for the rest of the season and [LA] signed someone else. I was fuming.”