Luke Littler found himself grilled on his maths this week – and one former darts champion was not impressed with Gary Neville’s antics.
Colin Lloyd was left annoyed with the line of questioning aimed at ‘The Nuke’ by Manchester United legend Neville on his podcast.
Littler is undoubtedly the biggest draw in darts, having created history in January by becoming the youngest world champion.
The 18-year-old claimed the UK Open last month – his fifth major of an already incredible career that’s still in its infancy – while coming out on top in four of the opening nine Premier League nights.
The teenager was grilled about his rapid rise to superstardom while appearing as a guest on Stick To Football earlier this week.
During the interview, Neville quickly put Littler’s mental maths to the test by challenging him to calculate checkouts on the fly.
“If I give you three random numbers, could you give me finishes straight away?” to which co-host Ian Wright exasperatedly sighed.
However, the Arsenal legend then committed his own faux-pas moments later when he joked about Littler’s accuracy tabling a 143 finish via a treble 20, treble 17 and double 16.
Two-time major winner Lloyd has since accused the podcast presenters of lacking respect for the darts ace with their antics.
“I actually thought that was a disrespectful question,” said Lloyd, who won the World Grand Prix and World Matchplay during his career, on talkSPORT.
“Quite simply because, of course we’d bloody know, we are professional darts players. Our game is numbers.
“It would have been like [asking] Gary Neville: ‘If I kicked a ball towards the goal, do you think you could slide-tackle in and clear it off the line?’. Yeah, of course he could, he’s a defender. Why did you ask him about numbers then?
“Was it Ian Wright who turned around and said: ‘He could call any number out against us, we wouldn’t know’. Do your research!
“Don’t sit there and say he could be saying anything and you wouldn’t know.
“How unprofessional did they make themselves look?
“How much are they disrespecting the sport of darts through not doing their homework?”
Lloyd’s verdict ironically came just days after another darts star slammed Littler’s rivals for being too respectful to him.
Retired star Vincent van der Voort insisted there are too many ‘fanboys’ of the 18-year-old on the PDC circuit.
Van der Voort singled out Stephen Bunting and Nathan Aspinall as being too nice to Littler on the oche – instead of looking to get in the youngster’s head.
Littler himself revealed on Stick to Football that Michael van Gerwen is a player who does indeed attempt to distract him with mind games.
He added: “I travel to tournaments with Chris Dobey and Nathan Aspinall as we’ve got the same management team.
“With the other players like Michael van Gerwen or Luke Humphries, we’ll talk in the practice room and have banter to try and get into each other’s heads.
“Before every tournament, before we go on stage, we throw for nearest bull to see who goes first and every time I’ll go over to Michael van Gerwen, and he’ll try to get in my head about hitting the bullseye first but always get it before he does!”
