"I do despair sometimes about what is written about us and I've been saying it for 18 months but it doesn't seem to make any difference," Curbishley said in the Echo News.

"If someone had just made a phone call (they would have discovered that) the boy played.

"He came over, he played on Tuesday in a reserve game arranged with QPR a week before that for James Collins to play in.

"He played for 80 minutes.

"He played, we didn't fancy it and he's gone back.

"After the game, me and Nani went to QPR to watch South Africa and Australia and then I dropped him home, so if we'd had a big row he wouldn't have got in the car."