Coleen Rooney accuses Jamie Vardy's wife Rebekah of leaking fake stories to the press

Coleen Rooney has taken to social media to point the finger at someone she suspects has been leaking stories about her to an English tabloid. Coleen posted a statement to Twitter this morning in which she explained that she has finally got to the bottom of an issue that has been worrying her for some time. She says she knew that somebody had been filtering stories to the The Sun newspaper - a paper which has been widely boycotted on Merseyside since 1989 after it printed sensationalist, false and defamatory reports on the Hillsborough disaster. Wayne and Coleen Rooney are among many high-profile personalties from Merseyside who refuse to talk to The Sun. While reporters from The Sun are still able to gain accreditation to matches and press conferences at Anfield and Goodison, in 2016, Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp made it clear that he would not take questions from anyone working for the newspaper.

Coleen Rooney issued the following statement this morning to explain that personal information had been leaked without her consent - allegedly by the wife of England player Jamie Vardy...

Coleen Rooney's statement accuses Rebekah Vardy

"This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and I have finally gotten to the bottom of it. For a few years now someone who I trusted to follow me on my personal instagram account has been consistently informing The S*n newspaper of my private posts and stories. There has been so much information given to them about me, my friends and my family - all without my permission or knowledge. After a long time of trying to figure out who it could be, for various reasons, I had a suspicion. To try and prove this I came up with an idea. I blocked everyone from viewing my Instagram stories except One account (Those on my private account must have been wondering why I haven't had stories on there for a while.) Over the past five months I have posted a series of false stories to see if they made their way into the newspaper. And you know what they did! The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV and the latest story about the basement flooding in my new house. It's been tough keeping it to myself and not making any comment at all, especially when the stories have been leaked, however I had to. Now I know for certain which account it's come from. I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them.

"It's Rebekah Vardy's account..."

Rebekah Vardy replies to Coleen Rooney

A couple of hours after Coleen Rooney posted her accusation on Twitter, a reply came back from Rebekah Vardy:

“As I have just said to you on the phone, I wish you had called me if you thought this. I never speak to anyone about you as various journalists who have asked me to over the years can vouch for. If you thought this was happening you could have told me and I could have changed passwords to see if it stopped. Over the years various people have had access to my insta and just this week I found out I was following people I didn't know and have never followed myself. I'm not being funny but I don't need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you? I liked you a lot a Coleen and I'm so upset that you have chosen to do this, especially when I'm heavily pregnant. I'm disgusted that I'm even having to deny this. You should have called me the first time this happened”.

The Sun also commented: "Each of the stories provided to The Sun was put to Coleen’s representatives before publication, and on each occasion they declined to comment..."

The internet reacts to Rooney v Vardy

The spat was soon all over social media, with the detective work and reveal swiftly dominating the conversation on Twitter and all manner of gags and memes swamping the fartherst corners of the Internet. At one point in the hours after Coleen Rooney's original post half of the top ten trending topics on Twitter in the UK were related to the incident.