Tony Hibbert isn’t happy with the way Everton treated his departures from Goodison Park.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hibbert said: “I was in Formby with my dad and brother when my wife Samantha rang to say she’d been getting text messages from friends that I wasn’t being retained. It was on the website.
“I couldn’t believe it so I rang a friend at the club to check. They said, “Tony, I honestly don’t know why nobody has spoken to you”. I contacted Leon and he was in exactly the same boat.
“I won’t tell a lie, I was really hurt. Surely someone at the club should’ve realised it wasn’t right. I’d rather have been told at any point during the season there wouldn’t be a contract so I’d have a chance to plan my future and say a proper farewell. No player deserves that whether they’ve been at a club for five minutes or 25 years.
“In what other job would someone be let go or fired without a senior manager talking and explaining what was happening? I never got that and I honestly don’t know why. I didn’t get the chance to properly say goodbye to the fans.
“Every contract I had at Everton, I never questioned it or demanded more money,’ he says. ‘I have never kicked up a storm even as a kid. But since David Moyes left (in 2013), I have noticed the club hasn’t got the same feeling.
“The People’s Club, it’s no longer that. It’s a ruthless, horrible business and a lot of good people have gone.
I understand a new manager wants to work a different way but it is a dog-eat-dog culture inside the club now. People are only looking out for themselves.”