Bradley Barcola has had an action-packed week at Liverpool after he followed up his first goals for the club on Wednesday with a maiden assist at the weekend.

The Frenchman had a quiet start to life at Anfield after joining for £123m in August, and there had started to be some uncomfortable feelings that Liverpool had overpaid on yet another expensive mistake.

Barcola‘s assessment appeared to be more specifically on what he had found at Liverpool under Andoni Iraola than a comment on the Premier League more widely, but Deeney still found a way to take offence from his fairly innocuous comments, telling TalkSPORT that the France international was talking out of turn.

“I didn’t like his interview where he said the French league is more tactical than the Premier League,” said the former Watford striker.

“Hmm, steady on. Steady on fella, you haven’t been here long enough to be talking about that, you’re also not playing well enough. I know he scored a hat-trick against LASK, but, according to my friend Sam Matterface, they’ve got a bakery in their stadium, so that shows how much of a footballing club they are.”

“I saw [former Arsenal midfielder] Emmanuel Petit saying no one in France would pay that level of money for Barcola. I would be showing him those clips and saying, ‘hey, they don’t actually think you’re at that level. Go and prove it.'”

Barcola is yet to score in the Premier League, and will be kicking himself for that after having a handful of really good chances against Brentford on Sunday.

With Deeney a fairly prominent – and outspoken – pundit, he will hope to get on the scoresheet soon to prevent the 38-year-old from running an ongoing agenda against him.