A former Premier League midfielder has directly addressed the hate after posting photos of him working on a building site.
After retiring from football altogether in October 2023, the former Chelsea and Aston Villa man has had a quiet time on the whole, but his latest Instagram post has seemingly put the 34-year-old back in the limelight.
He last played for Reading in a loan spell during the 2021/22 campaign, with his career slowly petering out following a number of off-field issues.
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Danny Drinkwater was a Manchester United academy graduate, having joined the club age nine, but failed to break into the first team.
After a few loan spells in the lower divisions, he joined Leicester permanently, helping them gain promotion from the Championship to the Premier League, which they famously won against 5000/1 odds in the 2015/16 season.
Drinkwater played a crucial role in Leicester's midfield in their near impossible Premier League title win alongside N'Golo Kante, and stayed at Leicester for a further year, picking up three caps for the England National Team too.
In the summer of 2017, he made a large scale £35m move to Chelsea, joining up with Kante a year after he made the move, and signed a bumper £120,000-a-week contract.
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The Brit managed 22 appearances and one goal in an injury-ravaged first season, but things went downhill with the arrival of a new manager in Maurizio Sarri.
Drinkwater only played one more game for the club in four years, with unsuccessful loan spells at Burnley, Aston Villa, Turkish side Kasimpasa and Reading failing to revive his career.
The former midfield enforcer is now back in the spotlight after he posted some photos of him on a building site on social media with the caption: "On site today."
Sharing his new hands-on employment with his 585,000 followers proved to be a mistake, as he received some negative comments which he chose to respond to on his story.
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One user said: "F***ing hell Danny you've hit rock bottom,"
And Drinkwater replied saying: "Some of these messages, behave. I love being on site grafting! It's a choice."
The former Leicester star has previously opened up about his mental health issues, after being charged for drink-driving and being attacked outside a nightclub, which resulted in ankle ligament damage.
After his retirement, he tried his hand at some business ventures, though it was reported by The Sun in November that he had lost £782,000 from a failed restaurant in Manchester, which went bankrupt after accumulating £2 million in debt.
Drinkwater bought a 70 percent stake in a different restaurant too, which has since shut for good.
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The Manchester-born Premier League winner admitted he's still finding his feet since retirement, saying in 2023: “Anyone who thinks earning good money will solve all of your problems is not true at all.
“Mental health is more important than physical. It was the darkest I’d ever felt,” he admitted.
Drinkwater also appeared on the High Performance Podcast in October last year, revealing: "I think I've been in limbo for too long, I've either been wanting to play but not getting the opportunities to play at a level where I felt valued.
"I just thought I'm restless here for no reason, I'm happy not playing football, but I'm happy playing football, so do I just shake hands with the sport?
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"It's all I've known, it's been my life since I was six or seven, it was never going to be an easy thing. I think the way it's died down has definitely helped.
"If I was playing week in, week out and had to stop through injury or age I think it would be trickier. I've had quite a few offers from Championship clubs, but I never felt the burn, it did nothing for me," the former Blue explained.
Topics: Football, Mental Health, Premier League, Social Media
Joshua Nair