Adel Taraabt criticism from QPR boss Harry Redknapp sparked by player walking out of team meeting prior to Liverpool game

Redknapp said the player was three stone overweight

Adel Taraabt in action for QPR against West Ham earlier this month (GETTY IMAGES)

Harry Redknapp’s criticism of Adel Taarabt after Sunday’s defeat to Liverpool was sparked in part by the Moroccan international walking out of a pre-match team meeting when he was not named in the team or on the bench for the game.

The Queens Park Rangers manager is understood to have been furious before the game at Taarabt’s reaction to being left out. The club were not sure whether the 25-year-old stayed to watch the match. Earlier in the week he had been under consideration to start the game and Redknapp asked staff to organise a match at the training ground with the express purpose of testing Taarabt’s fitness. It was in that game he was judged to be well off the pace.

After the game, when asked whether Taarabt was injured, Redknapp said that the player was “not fit to play football, unfortunately. He played in a reserve game the other day and I could have run about more than he did.” Later he added that he could no longer “protect people, who don’t want to run about and train, and are about three stone overweight.”

One of the longest serving players at the club, Taarabt was on loan at Fulham and Milan last season but no permanent deal was forthcoming. It would look impossible for him to make a comeback now for the club and he is likely to leave in January, six months before his contract expires.

The club’s midfielder Karl Henry admitted that the side had played like “Under-11s in twice conceding to Liverpool in the last four minutes of their injury-time defeat. Harry was not happy. He was shouting at us of course, we threw it away. It was naive from us, unprofessional. It can't happen.

“Someone said in the dressing room that it wouldn't have even happened in an Under-11s game. The goals we conceded were shocking. How were we unprofessional? Like with the first goal. They take a quick free kick and we were asleep. It was ridiculous.

“Then having them break on us for the second goal, running out of their box quicker than we did. You cross the ball and it drops in their box and it's not possible that they have four of five bodies in our box and we're not with them. That shouldn't be possible.

He continued: “You get to 2-2 late on in the game - you don't concede. But we dropped the free kick short rather than run it in the stand or making it sure it's long, in the corner, somewhere else.”