Why Manchester United’s Luke Shaw was right and Chelsea’s Romelu Lukaku so wrong - Sue Smith

As soon as I heard Shaw I thought lots of media outlets would pick up on it. That is why so many players speak like robots. You know what they are going to say before they say it.

All the coverage was about Shaw saying Manchester United’s team were not in it together, not giving their all. That is not how I interpreted what he was saying. I felt he meant they were not linking as a team, although he certainly criticised their effort.

Anthony Gordon scored his first two goals for Everton at the weekend and you could see as he clenched his fists after each one what it meant to him but as soon as he was interviewed it was into robot mode, talking about how bitter-sweet it was because his team lost.

I just wanted him to say he was absolutely buzzing but I have been there.

When I made my England debut, aged 17, I scored in a 6-4 defeat to Germany. I knew it was not the right thing to go into the changing room and start celebrating but that was all I was thinking underneath. Even in a team sport your individual performance matters.

It makes it so refreshing when somebody opens up a little bit.

Michail Antonio, the former Sheffield Wednesday player at West Ham United, is comfortable and happy to have a laugh. Rotherham United’s manager Paul Warne always comes across so well in interviews, and everyone who knows him says he is just a genuinely nice guy. You want people like them to do well.

As a women’s footballer in my era I never had any media training because the attention was much lower but if we reached the FA Cup final the BBC and local media took an interest and players not used to doing interviews would be put in front of a camera. A lot of people liked it because you got a feel for the characters. I remember a family friend saying it was brilliant to get to know who were the jokers, who were the stern, focused, professional ones.

Once Olympic rower Katherine Grainger came to speak to us before an England game so when we scored we did a rowing celebration. I was last in the line and messed it up, doing it like a canoeist while they were all rowing!

I got asked about it afterwards. I was happy to explain, and thought I should because it was interesting.

There is a balance, though.

Lukaku was too honest to Sky Italia.

I do not know why he asked to do the interview without telling Chelsea and could not see what he would gain from it.

Thomas Tuchel dealt with it really well, dropping him against Liverpool, then bringing him back against Tottenham Hotspur after he apologised. Some people said Tuchel was cutting his nose off to spite his face but you just cannot have players behaving like that, no matter who they are or how much they are paid.

If you are not happy with how things are, speak to the coach, the captain – anyone but the media.

When I played for England we started to get media training and now they get a lot, at club level too, with the likes of Jonathan Pearce and Geoff Shreeves asking difficult questions, putting them on the spot, digging deep into personal issues, so they learn to cope.

For us it was more about practising and if you said anything they thought you should not, they would pick you up on it.

It is important to know what to say and what not to, but we do not want to shut out the personalities.

Marcelo Bielsa can clearly speak English but does all his interviews through a translator because he does not want to be misinterpreted when so much can be read into one word he might not get 100 per cent right – by players, too.

Bielsa was ridiculed last season when he named his Leeds United team to face West Ham two days early.

“To avoid any backlash, I will not continue to give answers on the players who can or who cannot play,” he said in his next press conference, and Leeds fans get much less information before each match as a result now.

Honesty is better than robots.