"It is too little, too late": Patrick Mouratoglou's admission of Simona Halep guilt 'too little too late' according to Rennae Stubbs

Following Patrick Mouratoglou's admission that he feels responsible for the doping ban imposed on Simona Halep, former player Rennae Stubbs believes the confession might be a ploy to influence the verdict made on the Romanian.

Halep has been sidelined since the 2022 US Open, where she tested positive for Roxadustat, a banned substance. Subsequently, the former World No. 1 received a four-year ban in September from the ITIA (International Tennis Integrity Agency) for 'intentional' breaches of the sport's anti-doping rules.

Earlier this week, Mouratoglou took to social media, stating he and his team had established the source of the contamination to be a collagen supplement. The Frenchman also admitted that he felt responsible for Halep's doping ban as the supplement was recommended by him.

"This collagen happened to be contaminated, there was no way to know it. But I feel responsible for what happened because it's my team. So it's me basically who brought her this collagen," he wrote on Instagram.

In a recent episode of 'The Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast,' Stubbs elaborated on on the French coach's timing, suggesting it could an attempt to lessen the verdict placed on Halep.

"I have no insight into why he decided to come out now but I agree with you, it is too little too late," said Stubbs. "And unless he’s saying it now with the CAS, the arbitration whatever you call it, coming out where they have to go in front of them and hopefully they can get a little bit more of a lenient sentence, and he’s trying to put it out now for that particular court battle. Maybe he thinks it might sway CAS into saying yup, but a lot of people are like her passport was a little unusual.

"And then also you changed teams within six months. And she was dealing with a lot of injuries, remember the calf muscle issue she was having, various different things and they probably were trying to figure out a way to help her with that calf muscle injury.

"I don’t know, I’m completely speculating which I probably shouldn’t do, but I have to think that maybe they were trying to get that injury going and fixed and get her back on track and they felt that you talked about collagen and yada yada and brought that into her you know trying to get that into her system and and it f**ked her over."