Tottenham defender has hit back at Tim Sherwood following the pundit’s brutal criticism of his Spurs debut and has promised to ‘shut his mouth’.
The Spaniard arrived from Sporting in the January window on deadline day in a £40million deal, though the excellent form of Emerson Royal saw his game time limited initially and he had a disastrous debut against in which the side shipped four goals.
He has started the last three Premier League matches, though, assisting against Nottingham Forest – his eighth assist of the season including his time at Sporting – while he netted his first goal for the club with a powerful finish against Southampton.
Porro’s performances in recent weeks have even earned him a call-up to the Spanish national team, which seemed an unlikely prospect when he was getting slated by Sherwood during his Spurs debut.
The former Tottenham coach was on Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday show when he and called for him to be subbed off.
But Porro has now hit out at Sherwood over his comments, claiming it is ridiculous to have expected him to settle in and perform well straight away, and he is confident he will make the pundit eat his words.
Asked about Sherwood’s comments, Porro told : ‘It doesn’t annoy me, exactly. You know people will have their opinion, they’re going to say you played badly, that you’re no good or whatever.
‘You try not to even notice, but it’s impossible. There’s always someone saying: “Did you see this?”
‘You read what’s said about a player who has been at the club two days – two days – and that hits you because you think: “I’ve just got here!”
‘I’m not a machine that goes like this and that’s it, I know everyone, I’m integrated. I really hope he keeps saying bad things about me that will make me stronger.
‘But it’s true that it made an impression because I had been at a big club for so little time and well… Let me loose in a prison and I’ll end up owning the place. But it’s hard: it was only a week, I’d never played a minute at City, never played in England in my life.
‘It’s a couple of days, I start against Leicester. What do you want? For me to score five and cut out 70 balls?!
‘Anyone can have a bad day. From there, I just keep on: take English classes, get into the group, adapt.’
Informed that Sherwood did not pull up any trees during his playing days at Tottenham, Porro continued: ‘For me, it makes no difference. I don’t know him. I don’t know what had happened for him to speak.
‘People passed it on, saying he had spoken badly about me. But he won’t be the first who then had to shut his mouth.’
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