Rebekah Vardy has told the High Court that she was “just gossiping” when messaging her agent about the failure of one of her husband’s then teammates to come to training in 2018.
Coleen Rooney’s barrister David Sherborne read a message from Mrs Vardy to Caroline Watt about then Leicester City footballer Riyad Mahrez not coming to training, telling Ms Watt “the lads are fuming”.
Mrs Vardy said: “It was speculation of just bits of information that I had heard and overheard, and also read in the press before.”
Rebekah Vardy
Aaron Chown
She added: “Yes, it doesn’t look good there, I was gossiping about things that we already in the public domain. I was just gossiping.”
Mrs Vardy said she did not know whether or not her husband’s then team-mates were “fuming” about Mr Mahrez not turning up for training.
“It was probably something I was plucking from thin air. It was just a gossip that was all,” she told the court.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola with Riyad Mahrez
Nick Potts
She also said: “It was a speculation of bits of information that I’ve heard and overheard, and also they had been in the press before.”
The court heard that her agent asked if the “fuming” claim should be passed on to a Sky Sports reporter, but Mrs Vardy said he was not told.
She added that her husband “never discussed whether the lads were fuming”.
She admitted that the message exchange with her agent “doesn’t read very well”.
But Mrs Vardy denied accusations her agent could have passed this information on to The Sun.