It is now becoming a weekly (if not daily) occurrence that footballers (and Piers Morgan) are being abused on social media, and in Nketiah’s case it was in response to a post he put up about smiling in a training session!
It is now so endemic that surely the social media platforms, the police and the government must now be seen to be taking steps towards stamping our this vile trolling habit by a (hopefully) minority of football “fans”. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it seems that the more publicity they get without any punishment being handed out, the more they continue to do it.
There has been much made of the fact that quite a few of the abusers were actually Arsenal season-ticket holders, but there are also racist members from other clubs that join in to help spread their right-wing racist propaganda when given the slightest opportunity.
Arsenal have pledged to do their utmost to stamp this out, especially from season-ticket holders and a spokesperson told Sky Sports News: “We all need to work together to drive online abuse out of our game and off our social networks.
“The effect on individuals can be very deep and we work closely with our players and staff to help them deal with the impact. This includes support from sports psychologists and our social media team.
“As a club, one of the biggest challenges we face is identifying the perpetrators and linking them directly to our season ticket or membership databases. When we do have that information, we take the strongest possible action. This includes reporting to the police and membership bans from our club.
“Ultimately we all have to work together to stop the abuse and we fully support the Premier League’s recent statement calling on social media platforms to take more action to prevent abuse appearing online, including requiring all users to be subject to a verification process.”
Now is the time for all Arsenal fans to club together and help to stamp this out. We should all stay vigilant and report EVERY SINGLE bit of abuse that you see online. If we simply ignore it then it will never go away. I personally am on the JustArsenal Twitter page regularly, and I pledge to trawl the platform to weed out these trolls and get them removed. We need to see the police take ALL these incidents seriously and work to get these idiots charged and fined, and in some cases imprisoned.
And don’t forget the judges have to play their part too. Let us see proper punishment handed out, and not just a little bit of probation, which happened in the Ian Wright case.
Let’s all get together and stamp this out once and for all…
Admin Pat